Nov 2009 - Management Trainee
Arpil 2010 - Account Management Specialist
April 2011 - Senior Account Management Specialist
July 2011 - Account Manager
April 2012 - Senior Account Manager
April 2013 - Group Account Manager
Jan 2014 - Group Head
4 years for a journey from Management Trainee to a Group Head in Digital Advertising. Today I feel proud that the teams in which I worked earlier, I am managing multiple of such teams now. Lot of people around me tell me that I have grown quite fast. But those lot of them dont know about my journey before Nov 2009. There are lot of other profiles of work that I undertook before I joined a fulltime job as Management Trainee.
Below is the journey that was covered before Nov 2009:
In year 2001 I passed my SSC and had taken admission in Science in Wilson College. I had taken Science with desire to become an Engineer in IT. But a journey to become an engineer starts right from 1st year of your Junior College. Students start preparing for HSC even before clearing their 1st year as the competition to get an admission in a good Engineering college required not good but excellent marks. But there was a different script that was written for me. Forget about me starting to study for my HSC in first year I never got time to study for my 1st year exams. When I entered my junior college my Dad got ill and was not able to go to work due to his health. Looking at the situation and condition then I decided that I would start earning to run our family. It was just me, mom and my dad in my family. With SSC passed background if I would have gone to find work in any company I would have not got a job higher than an office boy with maximum salary of Rs 3000 per month. Also, my parents always had high expectations from me so they would have never allowed my to take up a job of any low profile. But luck shined on us and we got to buy a small milk vendor business in our area as the person who was running it wanted urgent money and so he had to sell it off. We never had savings to buy it so my Mom took help from her brother to finance the buying amount. Being a milk vendor business it had to be operated in early morning. So the work timings were early morning 4:00 AM to 8:00 AM to delivery the milk to the houses of the people. I took it up feeling I would able to manage it. Getting up at 4:00 AM every day was a huge challenge as I was not just doing this. My routine was 4:00 AM to 8:00 AM running the milk shop, then reaching college for 10:00 AM lecture, then coming home from college in evening 4:00 PM, then going to collect the cash from the customers who liked to pay on daily basis for the milk that we delivered to them in morning, then coming back home and study. I used to do most of it except the last part of coming back home and study. Because by the time I used to sit to study I used to dose off and sleep as I always had tension of getting up early again at 4:00 AM the next morning. I followed this routine for almost 2 years. It was hard along with my studies. But I was able to earn Rs15,000 per month to run my family and my own needs at that time which kept me going. It taught me a lot of things about work at a very early age of my life. It taught me how to interact with customers, how to deal with them, how to manipulate them, how to grow a business, how to multi-task and many more things. Out of everything it taught me one very important lesson of life that no work is small or big. Its your situation that decides what kind of work you would have to deal with.
As I was close to my HSC exams my Dad had recovered from his health and he decided to take over the Milk Centre business so that I get to study for my exams. By the time I left the Milk Centre business I had identified an opportunity to cross sell Tea Powder to local Chaiwalas who used to buy milk from us. They used to buy Tea Powder from local shops at Rs160 per kg. The same tea powder was available at wholesale markets at Rs80 per kg. I approached all the tea stalls whom we used to supply milk at a price of Rs140 per kg. Getting same tea powder for Rs20 less delivered to their shops was not a bad deal for them. I got few customers and was able to sell 2Kgs of tea powder everyday. This meant that I was able to make Rs120 profits by selling tea powder every day and this Rs120 was all my money and I didnt had to give a single penny of it at my home. This helped me of not getting suffered of not getting pocket money from my parents. I was earning more that what pocket money my friends used to get by doing hardly 30 mins of work every day. I sensed at that time that every business has an opportunity to cross sell something else. And if you can use that opportunity well you would be able to grow your business well. This learning I continued a lot in my first fulltime job and was successfully was able to do a lot of cross selling to keep growing companies business from exisiting clients.
I passed my HSC with average marks which didnt got me an admission in Engineering college but the marks were good enough to get me an admission in BSc IT. While I started first year in BSc IT I had not stopped Tea powder supply work. Also, as my spending needs were not very high so I started doing a lot of savings. One day I thought how can I make use of the money that is just lying idle in my Savings account. A thought came to my mind how about giving this money to people who needs it by charging them an interest. There were a lot of shop owners, local chaiwalas, footwear store owners who were in need of money. I started a scheme with such individuals. I gave them Rs9000 and they would return back to me Rs12000 in 3 months by paying me a fixed amount daily. I didnt continued this for a longer duration as I started realising I was taking a very high risk in this. There were individuals who werere not paying on time which was affecting me in long run. So after a time I stopped with this business of lending money to people and charging an interest to them. This sort of business taught me how to manage risks. Also it taught me that in your work sometimes you have to go by your gut feelings. If you feel that in a long tun you would make a higher loss then you should stop even if you are making short term profits.
By the time I completed my first year in BSc IT I was feeling lost. I had started feeling this field is not meant for me. Its not like I didnt Iiked computers but the subjects that we had were all about software programming and I was never able to cope up with programming languages. Then I decided to do a course in Computer Hardware and Networking. It was a 3 months course which taught me how to assemble a computer. Again I saw a business opportunity out after doing this course. I felt assembling a computer is not a difficult job and has good money in it if you are able to get customers. I along with one of my friend started approaching few of our contacts to enquire whether they would like to buy computers from us. At that time if we used to sell one computer we used to earn around Rs15,000 to Rs20,000. It was good enough money for efforts that were for a days time. Even if we used to sell one computer in 2 months we used to feel more than happy. Also, simultaneously I was doing a course in Graphic Designing and Animation. This was a fulltime course and fees of this course was equal to my 3 years fees of BSc IT. After taking up this course I started feeling I would not be able to pursue a career in Graphic Designing or Animation. I dont know why I felt like that but then in my mind I always wanted to earn back the money my parents had put in this course as it was not a small amount. Once I learnt graphic designing I started taking work to design and print - logos, visiting cards, letter heads, stationary, etc for small companies that were in my contact. I earned good enough money from these jobs but it was not good enough that I could tell my self that I recovered the money my parents had put in for the course. Computer Networking and Graphic Designing jobs that I did gave me higher satisfactions. This was something that I learnt and then used in application to earn money out of it. Also, these jobs were of higher status I would say compared to what I had done earlier.
Then I passed my BSc IT in 2006. I never sat for the campus interviews as all the companies that came for campus interviews had jobs for programming which I was never interested in. Also, I completed my course in Graphic Desigining and Animation. I had two options in front of me at that time - one get into some Software company and write programs and second use my course knowledge and get into graphic designing and animation. I kept my mind open and tried a job in both the fields. IT job I did for 2 days in one of the IT MNC and Graphic Designing job I did for a week in small Graphic Designing firm. As both the options didnt worked for me I decided to pursue MBA. It was a brave decision looking at the financial condition of my family. Getting admission in MBA college was a difficult task and if you got an admission than minimum amount that was required to pay the fees was Rs2,00,000 for 2 years course. All the past works that I did gave me a lot of learnings but didnt gave me that high savings. So, I convinced my Moms sister that she pay my fees and I would return it back to her in an year once I complete my MBA course and get a fulltime job. I studied for MBA entrance exams and failed big time as I scored very less marks. Luckily I got admission in one of not very reputed college. I took an admission thinking the course is same what other colleges has so I should be able to sail through. After my 1st year I got an internship in Digital Advertising company - BC Webwise. I did a 2 months internship in this company and I was loving what I was doing there. I realised that this is something that I would love to do for rest of my life. I decided I would pursue a fulltime career in Digital Advertising post my MBA studies.
In 2nd year of my MBA through a contact I came to know that there was a big requirement for a 3d animation work in one of the premium hotels in India. The scope of the project was huge and I looked at this as an opportunity to recover the money my parents had put in the course I did in Graphic designing and Animation and also recover the fees that was put into my MBA studies. I never had hands on experience of 3d animaton but I knew a lot of people who could do this work. I contacted one of the person who had good portfolio to present to the Hotels manager who had the decision over who should get the project. He was impressed with what we showed him and he gave us work for 4 properties across India. As I mentioned the scope of this project was huge so I was able to pay my Moms sister the money that she had given me for MBA studies well before the time I committed to her. In this work my role was more of Project Manager which involved man management and making sure to execute the project as per deadlines. I learnt a lot about how to manage people and get work done from them as per your requirements during this project. Then I completed by MBA in Marketing in the year 2009 and as planned got into a fulltime career into Digital Advertising in Nov 2009.
This was a journey that I covered before Nov 2009. It was a journey of lot of hard work, learnings, lessons that no course, no fulltime job can teach you. Be it client relationship management, cross selling, team management, timely executions, new learnings, etc all were the lessons that I learnt from each of the small works that I took at my early age and now I use them in my daily work now and they give me lot of positive results. Journey from Management Trainee to Group Head was a faster one is what I agree with the people who mention it to me but the efforts that went before actually becoming a Managment Trainee is what made it possible to cover the journey to become Group Head faster and now grow further in my Career.