Journey to perfection…

Gayatri Thampi, GMBA (Batch  of 2012) describes herself as a typical Bombay girl from a typical suburban Bombay family where both parents possess advanced degrees and are engaged in productive professions. Her mother is a Manager with a leading nationalised bank whereas her father is an entrepreneurial businessperson with several start-up ventures to his credit. And her sister is an image consultant engaged with several leading corporations for providing training on the basics of corporate etiquettes, grooming, social skills and image makeovers. In Gayatri’s case, for her undergraduate degree, she decided to pursue BMM (Bachelors of Mass Media) from a reputed Indian college and soon after completion, took up the opportunity to work in the media related domain in sales and marketing with a start-up. She says that “there was always something about thinking big and starting small that always intrigued” her.

Gayatri learnt her basics by being hands-on and then decided to move on to a bigger experience with India’s largest media firm, Viacom 18 Media Pvt Ltd where she worked with the Vh1 marketing team for the next year and half befor e deciding that it was time to pursue a postgraduate degree. She says that achieving an advanced degree was not even an option for her because of her background and the family that she belongs. She always knew that she would pursue a higher degree, but it was her exposure to sales and marketing that sealed in her choice of the domain in which she wished to further her learning.

S P Jain Global was always Gayatri’s first choice as she was clear that she would pursue her higher studies only from the most reputed institution. A second consideration was that she wanted to reduce the lead time for returning back to the workplace and the one year degree was ideally suited for this as well as adding to her savings in terms of lesser opportunity costs. A third consideration was that she wanted a global exposure; having stayed in Bombay all her life, she wanted to experience different places and cultures both socially and professionally. Gayatri insists that choosing the right college was not an issue for her as she was clear that she wanted a one year program, an out of India experience and global curriculum, all of which she found at one place after doing the due diligence on S P Jain Global. And of course, once on campus, she claims that the faculty pool at S P Jain was unparalleled in that it represented the best business minds from the three cities which the students visit as well as academicians from the best business schools across the globe. Additionally, Gayatri advises that there are co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, socially relevant activities, travel opportunities and industry interface opportunities outside the scope of one’s classroom to add to the learning experience. If there’s one area that Gayatri would like to see improved, then it would be the increase in diversity of the peer group which she feels is an integral part of the peer learning process and which she thinks was somewhat missing from the classroom.

On completing the program, Gayatri had on top of her wish list of sectors that she would like to work for, FMCG Marketing and further in her list of best companies to work for, Unilever featured amongst the top ones. Today, Gayatri is working for her dream company Hindustan Unilever Ltd as a marketing professional and she credits this feat to the career advancement offices and the entire learning process at S P Jain Global. She claims that not only has she achieved her professional milestones, but personally too she has grown as an individual. The entire experience of living independently, interacting with achieved professionals, travelling to unknown destinations, representing the school and country at different international forums has helped her all round development and continues to add to her personality and professional growth and one day she hopes will help her in starting her own business venture. She maintains that the returns on investment at S P Jain Global cannot be measured in mere figures; it’s the amalgam of experiences, exposures, people, cultures, business networks and learning concepts which will reap rich returns for the rest of her life, both professionally and personally.

We congratulate Gayatri on her near perfect journey and wish her the very best in all her future endeavours and hope to see her soon as an entrepreneur, generating employment for many others.