Team – Say hello to Vignesh.
Vignesh is another Indian Male IT Engineer. Think we are meeting several such folks? That’s because many IT Engineers apply to business school, and that’s why you should expect stiff competition if you belong to that demographic.
But that’s not the subject of this post.
This post is about Vignesh and his dreams.
Vignesh’s long term goal was to revolutionize the agricultural supply chain in India. When he first told me this, I was impressed. And yet, I was not sure.
I said, “Vignesh, I salute your desire to improve the agricultural backbone of our country! But what does it have to do with your professional background in IT quality insurance?”
Vignesh looked puzzled as well. He said, “Karthik – I can’t connect these two either, but the goals just feel right to me!”
As much as I admired his vision, I knew dramatic career shifts might not receive a lot of buy-in from the application readers.
Regardless, I decided to further our conversation on this.
Further, into the discussion, Vignesh opened up a little. “Karthik, my grandfather and my uncle are farmers. Every year, we pack our produce and send it to the markets a few hundred kilometres away. A good percentage of it spoils by the time it reaches the market, and our family has to bear the cost every year. I want to change this situation!”
Vignesh had managed to explain, successfully, how this an extremely personal problem to him.
But that still didn’t explain one thing. Did he have sufficient professional background to tackle this problem?
“Karthik, when I was consulting for a giant Australian retailer, I learned that their food storage and supply chain was exceptionally well set up. Their spoilage was much smaller than what my family faced in India. I helped them develop strategies to improve this KPI even further!”
Putting it all together – the Eureka moment!
Remember Archimedes and his Eureka moment? That’s how I felt at that point! We had just cracked Vignesh’s “Why MBA story?”
Vignesh came from a family of farmers. They suffered heavy monetary losses because of the spoilage they faced in an inefficient food supply chain. In contrast, the Australian retailer that Vignesh consulted for, in his capacity as an IT consultant, had great numbers on this KPI because they had an ultra-modern supply chain and cold storage network. Vignesh figured that, if he could only replicate this in India, he would be of service to several thousand farmers, and the entire country – as we are all consumers. But to implement a project at this scale, he needed strong business foundations.
And this was why he needed an MBA!
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