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It finally came down to doing a well-settled bank job against an MBA from the prestigious DoMS, IIT Roorkee. And that too during these turbulent times for the Indian market after GST and Demonetisation. However, MBA was a dream in the backburner and I felt it was the time I go for it after having worked for three and a half years in IT and Finance industries. I belong to a middle-class family. My father who worked as a Marketing Manager was the only breadwinner. He was my role-model and had inspired me for so long. The way he established himself in the corporate world while having a rural background had created an everlasting image in my mind and planted seeds for pursuing the MBA.

Further in pursuit of my dreams, I completed my B.Tech course from Bapatla Engineering College which is one of the best engineering colleges in my state. It provided me with four wonderful years. Then at the end of the 4th year, I tried to bell the CAT. There I achieved a decent percentile and at the same time, I also secured a job at TCS through campus placements. At that time, I decided that I should join the corporate world to understand the industry from the inside and thereafter I will go for MBA.

After a brief stint at TCS, I cracked IBPS exam in my 1st attempt and joined Bank of India as Probationary Officer since my interests were in the field of finance. On completion of initial training, I was assigned a role of Credit Officer for SME loans wherein I had to analyse the financial capability and technical feasibility of the project of a company and thereafter process the loan. This gave me a golden opportunity to study and understand about various companies of both manufacturing and trading, hence further increasing my appetite to understand the company in depth. The work-life of my predecessors there, who were management graduates inspired me even more to do an MBA.

On one fine day of March’16, I started preparing for the CAT but being in a time demanding job, it wasn’t a smooth ride. Then there was the demonetisation process, which came in like a speed breaker for all and slowed down my preparation with only a month remaining for CAT. It was one of the toughest times in the Indian banking history. My job became more demanding, extracting every ounce of my energy and I hardly had any time to prepare. The only good thing was that I had started my preparation early. It helped me to face the CAT confidently and allowed me to make a decent attempt.

I was very happy with the results and my happiness grew, even more, when I started receiving interview calls from my target IITs and new IIMs. The interviews went extremely well with most questions focused on my work experience. I was impatient while waiting for the final results. The wait was fruitful and I converted in the first list of DoMS IIT Roorkee which is ranked at 8th position in NIRF rankings. As an engineering graduate, being an IITian is the most prestigious tag. IIT Roorkee has 365 acres of lush green campus with better ROI with respect to many IIMs. Here you get a chance to get dual specialisation. Pedagogy is simply great. Other facilities include a state-of-the-art library and a huge sports complex. It was like a dream come true for me and without any further ado, I accepted the offer, completed my formalities and joined the college in the month of July. It has been a couple of months now and the college amuses me even more than before. There is so much we can learn here with some event or session happening almost every day. I couldn’t have asked for more. Today I am thanking my lucky stars for this great opportunity and I am hoping that I will add another chapter to the “Thomsonian Pride” of IIT Roorkee.

Sasikanth Akhilesh

Batch 2017 – 19
DoMS IIT Roorkee