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1. Tell us more about your role & responsibilities at your college.
Since my school days, I have always enjoyed reading. Literature, science, history all had their beautiful stories to tell. But I was always fascinated by many things. When I saw people giving awesome speeches I thought, ‘Wow! I wanna do that.’ This happened with cricket, painting, music and photography too. There were tons of failures. But I found a few hobbies I enjoyed doing and I was somewhat good at too. Having a holistic personality, I was selected as the School captain of Kendriya Vidyalaya Cuttack, 2010-11.
In my engineering days at VSSUT, Burla I was the part of a student initiative that worked for teaching underprivileged children. It was kind of a night school. We call it, ‘Sanskar Kendra’. I was the principal of it from 2013-14. We managed funds, planned the classes, organised social development classes for the parents and made lots of memories. Then I thought I was helping them, now I realise it made the person I am today.
In IIM Bangalore, I was the part of the Dramatics Club named ‘Goonj’. I acted in plays, wrote scripts, made movies. I learned to edit. I was the part of the Photography club ‘Dress Circle’. Learned a lot from passionate friends. Later I was elected as the Secretary of the movie-making club. We made five short movies, arranged 200+ shoots, Covered 6 major fest coverage.
In one line, every responsibility was like managing people. I just ensured everyone enjoys their work and the job gets done.
2. What have been some of your biggest challenges and learnings from what you do?
I have a beautiful story for it. I took a gap year to prepare for CAT. Then I was trying to start up a Production house. Then a group of friends were crazy to make something wonderful, but we had absolutely no idea how to do it.
We asked a person to join us. He was good with the camera and editing. But after 3 videos, he quit. We didn't have any money to hire, no camera to shoot ourselves and no idea about playing with the editing software.
I was disturbed badly, for I was seeing my vision disappearing. I was surfing YouTube and found a poem recited by Amitabh Bachhan Sir. Few lines stuck with me,
‘Sooraj sa tej nahi mujhme,
Deepak sa jalta dekhoge,
Apni hadh roshan karne se,
Tum mujhe kab tak rokoge
Tum mujhe kab tak rokoge’
I made up my mind, ‘karna hai toh karna hai’. We had two I Phones and one Dell Laptop. I learned video editing on Sony Vegas. Thanks to You Tube and incessant hit and trials. I had a 2GB Ram Laptop. Editing was painfully slow. Often editing a 5 min video took 12 hours. But we overcame. Made 30 small films. Nothing big happened but it taught me a lot of things. Perseverance wins all battles.
3. How do your parent's look at you participating in extracurricular activities?
I am a free bird. My family always were glad to let me try. Very often I see people blaming their parents as they didn’t let them go with their passion. But I never saw the burning desire of passion in those people who complain that. People say, ‘cricketer banta toh main Kohli ban jata, ghar walon ne mana kar diya’.
Do they even know how much efforts he puts in? Our soft generation stuck in social media often blames our failures on the family. But really, if we can’t overcome a little family pressure for our passion, how can we fight the world, who is going to punch us in the mouth and shatter our dreams!
4. Do you enjoy the kind of influence you hold at such a young age?
I am fairly a people-oriented person. I love having an influence. But most, I love having a positive and good influence. If I am even a tiny part of somebody’s happiness it gives me immense pleasure.
5. What are your career goals and how is what you are doing going to help you with that?
I don’t have an answer to that in one line. I love what I do now. As of now business, sales and marketing excites me. I want to do it with my whole heart and make tons of money.
I want to inspire at least 50,000 people and regarding, how I plan to get is that I am a very hardworking person. I read a lot regarding the field I am in. I talk to a lot of people to generate ideas. If it takes me 9 failures for 1 success, I make sure I fail 9 times in practice and win at the performance.
6. Do you have a message for parents to allow their kids to do things besides academics?
Yeah, I do! ‘Your children need your knowledge, but they have to gain experience for themselves. Be their fall back option, but let them fail. Let the fail tons of times. Have a little faith, You have raised them good. They will make you proud one day’.
7. What's your message to encourage students to do internships and attend conferences?
Follow your heart. Do more to be more. Ever tried, Ever failed? Try Again, Fail Again. Fail Better. The world is yours.
Interview by - Benil Joseph
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