Siva Surya Teja, from Samalkot, Andhra Pradesh, is one among the eight toppers this year. In fact, even before the results came out, there were talks that he might be one of the likely toppers. Speaking to PaGaLGuY, Siva said, “I was confident about the CAT this year. But I was scared when my name started doing the rounds as one of the toppers. Now, I am very happy.”

Siva, 24, has completed his engineering from JNTU Anantapur and has been working with Infosys Hyderabad for the past two and a half years. This was his fourth attempt at the exam. He told PaGaLGuY that while his first attempt was only to understand the exam, he scored 99 and 96 percentile in the second and third attempts respectively.

He said, “I was confident about Quant as math is my strong point but not very confident about English. This year I worked put in more effort in the verbal section.” He did not take full-time coaching and only took the SIMCAT and the TIME online series.

Apart from CAT, Siva has also cleared qualified Indian Institute for Foreign Trade (IIFT), Delhi and will be going for the interview this year. He has also taken the Xavier’s Aptitude Test (XAT). His dream b-school is IIM Ahmedabad, and he wants nothing less than Ahmedabad, Bangalore or Calcutta. “When I had scored 99 percentile, I had calls from some IIMs but did not go for the interviews. I want to study only from the top b-schools,” he said.

Siva had also acquired almost a celebrity status in his district due to his flair in math. The topper has also done a couple of math magical shows. Numbers apart, the topper also likes writing poetry and reading books.