SellYourTime – Making its way to SUCCESS!
SellYourTime – a brand new venture established by one of S P Jain School of Global Management’s alumni, Akshay Arora, who remains focused and scaling up a real business of delivering value to its customers. They have been covered by all top blogs like Yourstory, Inc42, Business India Magazine etc. as an emerging start-up in this space.
S P Jain School of Global Management’s alumni Akshay Arora who completed his GMBA program in 2012 majoring in marketing, belongs to a Delhi based service-oriented middle income family. His entrepreneur father works in the area of disaster management engaging with government organisations at various levels and his mother, of a similar enterprising spirit, runs a garments business.
It was only befitting therefore that Akshay, after completing his engineering in IT from Jaypee University Noida and having worked for 3 years in the tech sector, should begin to explore avenues for becoming an entrepreneur in his own right. The three years that Akshay spent at the Delhi based organisation (First Tech solutions Pvt Ltd ) in pre-sales and then sales, travelling across India, connecting with top level decision-makers and selling defence and intelligence software/equipment to Indian defence and security forces, helped him gain substantial exposure to the nuances of conducting business. However, this also whetted his appetite and increased his urge to pursue higher qualification and knowledge to help widen the horizon of his ideas about business and to help him rise up the corporate ladder faster.
He is of the opinion that an MBA is an investment that can raise the level of knowledge and professional standing. Another important objective for him was to network with like-minded people so that after 10 years he could have a network of friends working in some of the biggest organisations around the world.
Having decided to pursue a higher qualification, Akshay had evaluated a few top colleges like IMT Ghaziabad, Great Lakes Chennai, IMI and Fore before narrowing down to his final choice of S P Jain’s Global MBA. He feels that S P Jain’s PG program quite matched his objectives. Firstly, S P Jain being a brand name in India enjoyed great reputation and he was sure that standard of education would be one of the best compared to other B schools. Secondly, the programs had already ranked well in global rankings by Forbes and ET. And lastly, it was a one year rigorous program which would help him save a year in time and opportunity costs; and provide exposure to two world class cities, Dubai and Singapore (during Akshay’s time the program spanned across two cities not three as it does now).
Additionally, he had also conducted his own research about past batches and placements, interacted with a few alumni members who helped in making up his mind that going for GMBA would be a good decision.
Akshay thinks there are a number of factors why the GMBA program can be a great choice for students looking for a higher degree in business and management. He claims that the pedagogy used at S P Jain School of Global Management is among the best, used across business schools in the world with highly experienced faculty being flown from the top B- schools across the world to teach the programs. The program really succeeds in adding real value to the business education by having a tri-city model. The stay in those cities is leveraged well to provide necessary experience and exposure and it is an USP in itself. In addition, the classmates you study and interact with are all with prior work experience and from different geographies and professional backgrounds. He stresses that staying with different people over 2-3 different locations helps a lot in learning the art of people management and building on emotional intelligence.
On the other side of the programs, he feels that the alumni network needs to be strengthened with effort from both the alumni and college for leveraging the immense potential an alumni network can provide in all possible ways. Apart from this, he thinks a greater participation in Global B-school events and interaction with other global B-School brands is required to add to the experience of the program at S P Jain.
Talking of career services, Akshay’s explains that the final leg of his GMBA program was in Dubai and his class had an intensive placement season with opportunities being rolled-out by career development services over a 5-6 month period. The best part he feels was the preparation for mock interviews/tests that started only a few weeks after the start of the program in Singapore. They had sessions from few alumni present in Dubai to guide them on how to crack job interviews and working in Dubai.
Akshay feels that he was fortunate to be placed out of the Dubai campus much before the program ended. He worked with Larsen & Toubro in Dubai for about 1.5 years and post that moved back to India with Samsung electronics in New Delhi. Recently, he has embarked on a new journey and started up a venture called SellYourTime-a marketplace for services. It is currently on the android platform and they have a web product as well.
Akshay adds that apart from the theoretical knowledge that they gained while studying more than 50 subjects and 100s of case studies in 1 year, the guidance of professors on how organisations are led by great visionaries, people with high focus on customer needs and risk taking ability, is a great takeaway. The emphasis on being a leader and on building a successful business has been a great inspiration for him throughout the GMBA program. Another key takeaway has been improving on his time and people management skills. He feels that when one works within different teams, one learns to be receptive to and sensitive towards others’ opinions. A case in point was the weekly CEO concept wherein every week 1 person from a pre-defined team was given the responsibility to act as the CEO and drive all team efforts to come out with the best performance for group tasks. He has recently hired a few interns for his start-up, SellYourTime where he has applied this concept and seen great results as people felt responsibility and learnt team management.
Akshay remains totally focused on building and scaling up a real business through his new venture SellYourTime. They have been covered by all top blogs like Yourstory, Inc42, Business India Magazine etc. as an emerging start-up in this space. In the near future, they intend to deliver value to people through the platform for more reasons than now. He hopes to make this a successful organisation in the coming years. He thinks that the PG studies at S P Jain has established a great foundation and understanding of business in general and it will be instrumental in defining his management and leadership style for years to come. He adds that the program not only meets the ‘value for money’ tag when it comes to ROI, it exceeds expectations which one realises couple of years after completing the program. He feels that the greatest asset one takes along is the network of friends who will be soon leaders in different organisations and locations creating a strong network of contacts. Moreover, he feels that the 1-year program added a sense of maturity that one would generally take perhaps 5 years to gain otherwise.
