At present he is balancing the studies within Asia’s premium business school, ranked 15th in the world by the Financial Times, with an internship at China's largest privately-owned conglomerate (with US$ 8.5 Billion in revenue). If it wasn’t challenging enough for Ananth to embark on the 18-month MBA program at China Europe International Business School, an institution that sees 94% of its graduates in employment after just three months, a summer stint with Fosun Group - Ananth’s first experience of the Finance sector - was surely a baptism of fire.
“It was good fun mixing numbers and strategy," he says, all humble and confident. “I soon realized that once the numbers are ‘crunched’, my consulting experience helped me come up with insightful recommendations... which I think I have begun to enjoy.”
Ananth worked for the Government of India as an engineer. He worked on a Military Technology team, designing components that were used on satellites. He worked as a Marketing Executive in Singapore. He is Vice President of the CEIBS Management Consulting Club. He is also Vice President of the CEIBS Tennis Club and is backing Novak Djokovic to win the US Open this month - although we can forgive him for that (it’s Andy Murray for the BB team).
But Ananth began his career as an engineer and received a BE in 2007 from the Thiagarajar College of Engineering. He knew he possessed the technical experience, but he needed to understand business as a whole. “My long term plan was to be a global business leader,” he said. “To date, I have experience working in Marketing, Operations and Consulting. In retrospect, I guess I designed my own leadership development program.”
His business trajectory took a turn into the extraordinary when he landed an internship with a technology team in the Indian Military. He designed a two-way power divider for the team, and says that “perfection” was expected of him. “I was exposed to the ‘perfection’ that is expected of you,” he explained. “The tolerance limits were very small. Since the equipment was used on satellites, the margin of error is negligible. It got me to appreciate the meticulous planning and execution, both of which have been invaluable to my career since then.”
When he wasn’t developing equipment for military satellites, Ananth was working for the Centre for Development of Advance Computing, Government of India, developing a remote-sensing system that he describes as a “breakthrough similar to the transition from MS-DOS to Windows”. “It measured conditions such as temperature and humidity in places ranging from five feet under soil to a boiler at 750 degrees C, remotely,” he said. “I worked on introducing the option of visual inspection. Although I am not sure if the company introduced it, it was quite a big breakthrough of going from numbers to pictures - similar to the transition from MS-DOS to Windows!”
In 2007, Ananth landed a job as an International Marketing Executive with Viswa Lab Pte Ltd in Singapore. By 2010, he was an Associate at Ernst & Young – the third largest professional services firm in the world and one of the ‘big four’ accounting firms. After 9 months, he was promoted to Senior Associate. In his initial interview, he was questioned as to the relevance of his engineering background. “My answer was simple. All through my engineering in Electronics and Communication, I was trained to look for the problem, find out what caused it and then fix it. It’s a similar methodology that you follow in consulting,” he said.
“Once I joined as an Associate, I knew I was racing against time to gather as much experience as I could, to help me in my future MBA admissions, and was pretty focused on it.
“My marketing experience helped me become ‘client ready’. I guess I convinced them that I could bind in various unrelated parts. E&Y is truly a great place to work.”
Ananth knew he wanted to study for an MBA long before he landed a job with Ernst & Young, which was an easy decision. The tough choice was deciding when to apply. Ananth says he was bitten by the “dollar bug”, but his passion for reaching a higher pedestal ensured he said goodbye to his comfort zone and “embraced student life” at CEIBS. “During my application process, my main targets were Singapore and China. China presented me with opportunity of experiencing a way of life that I wasn’t familiar with,” he said.
“I feel that understanding the ‘way of life’ is paramount for doing business in a different country. An opportunity to observe and learn from not only my Chinese peers but also peers from 21 other countries was a good enough reason for me to pack my bags and fly to Shanghai.
“In retrospect, I feel I have understood the importance of cultural sensitivity, which in many cases supersedes business acumen. Judging by the hilarious experiences of surviving language and cultural differences, I can now confidently admit that this was a good decision!”
The CEIBS MBA, originally from India, is about to begin an exchange program at INSEAD, where he will get to spend two months in Singapore and two months in France. He says graduating with credentials from two top MBA schools will add “more weight to his resume”. “INSEAD was one of my dream schools during my engineering days,” he said. “In my opinion, the business of the future is going to be more local than global.
“With the experience of studying in three diverse countries, interacting with students from various part of the world, establishing a truly global network of friends, I intend on acquiring a new perspective of ‘East meets the West’.”
It is not just a diversity of MBA-program-cultures that enthuses Ananth. From engineering, to military technology, to international marketing, to consultancy, to MBA: his career path is diversity personified. So what’s next on the horizon, does he hope to stay in China?
“It depends!” he says. “E&Y had given me a wonderful spring-board to launch my career into the corporate world, and China has been kind enough to adopt me.
“I plan to try and enter Management Consulting with the ‘Big 3’, or into Investment Banking, my recently discovered interest. But I am also keeping my eyes open to the ‘Leadership Development Programs’ that provide a route to becoming a business leader. If I find this opportunity at E&Y or China, then I would say, ‘why not!’”
Why not indeed. It seems Ananth will try his hand at anything and everything. And while studying at CEIBS, he hasn’t done too badly so far.
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