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Nanyang Opens the Finance Door for MBA in Singapore

Rajeev Batra has stayed in Singapore with a job at CB Richard Ellis since finishing his MBA at Nanyang Business School. He worked in HR consulting before switching careers to finance!

Tue Sep 17 2013

BusinessBecause
Rajeev Batra is a Finance Manager at the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm. For the last two years and five months, he has been responsible for long term costing and budgeting forecasts and has developed strategies for multinational corporations across Asia Pacific economies at CB Richard Ellis (CBRE).

He has managed to land a job with CBRE Group, a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company that has a current stock price of almost $24 million, based in Singapore, thanks to the MBA program at Nanyang Business School.

But his career path has not been clear-cut. While he began life studying a Bachelor of Business Studies at Delhi University in India, he only had eyes for the most popular b-school graduate industry; consulting.

Rajeev graduated in 2006 and joined the ranks at Hewitt Associates, an American provider of Human Capital and Management Consulting services headquartered in Lincolnshire in the US. When he left the company in 2009, he had risen to Project Manager after just three years in HR consulting. He was leading a team of five associates and received the highest performance ratings in customer satisfaction scores in both 2007and 2008.

Rajeev’s success at Hewitt was compounded by his selection from a team of twenty associates to work on consulting assignments at the company’s corporate office in Illinois. “It was an incentive tool our team had,” Rajeev said. “The quality of output is what pleased Hewitt the most; rather than getting the most work done.”

But despite his standing with the consultancy firm, Rajeev wanted to transition into finance. He thought that it was a “big jump” and he needed a specialist skill set to land a role in the finance world. He knew that he wanted to study an MBA and considered some of the business schools in his home, India. But Rajeev wanted a gateway into the Asian markets.

He thought that the diverse population at Nanyang would be the most beneficial asset. “I had wanted to do an MBA to switch industries,” he said. “I was also looking for an MBA to give me a good, diverse learning experience and I think the class at Nanyang was diverse. If I compare it to other universities in Asia, it was the one single most important factor.

“My primary criterion was broad-based learning and that can come from a diverse set of peers. Although there are a few good MBA programs in India, the peer groups are not very diverse. They’re a good bunch but it would be 70% Indian nationalities.”

Rajeev specialised in Finance and Strategy while at Nanyang in Singapore and enjoyed living in Singapore so much that he snapped up a job with Jatro AG, a BioJet fued company, straight after graduation in 2010. Jatro AG is a renewable fuels company that pioneered the cultivation, manufacturing and marketing of certified aviation fuel and by-products from Jatropha oil, made from a species of flowering plant that is cultivated in sub-tropical regions around the world. They have access to the majority of the world's Jatropha germplasm.

In a company role of Financial Analyst for just over a year, Rajeev helped secure off-take agreements worth 800,000 USD and developed a $36 million financial model.

But his most impressive feat in the oil industry was the formation of the first ever price index for Jatropha oil. Rajeev essentially set a new industry standard and helped standardize pricing policy which increased net margins for his company by 33 per cent.

Thanks to the MBA program at Nanyang, he learnt how important corporate responsibility has become. Jatro AG’s sustainable policy was an important factor in his decision to start a finance career there. “During my MBA we learnt about corporate social responsibility and renewable energy,” he said.

“It opened our eyes to the potential of the industry. Its already one of the wonders in the West, but it’s up and coming now in the East. It’s a promise for the future that’s growing pretty fast.

“’Green’ oil is a little more expensive, so people might not embrace it immediately. But at the same time, we’re running out of non-renewable energy, so people will have to look for new types as oil becomes more expensive.”

Rajeev soon moved onto a prestigious role at CB Richard Ellis in May 2011 and has been there ever since. He got the job through a direct application, but stresses that the careers team at Nanyang helped him set up interviews with finance companies. He also met alumni from the Nanyang MBA program in finance companies in Singapore.

But he enjoys working in Singapore because it acts as a hub for business in Asia. “It’s an exciting place to be because it’s the regional hub of Asia along with Hong Kong,” Rajeev said.

“But the kind of response that job roles get here, not only in Singapore but the whole of the region… you get exposed and its much more enriching from a learning perspective.”

There is always debate about the best Asian cities for MBAs to work in. But after landing a job with real estate giants CB Richard Ellis, Singapore was clearly the right choice for Rajeev. While consulting remains a domiant force in the MBA careers world, finance is a switch that has paid off for this MBA graduate. There's no doubt he is enjoying living and working in Singapore - a move he couldn't have done so smoothly without Nanyang Business School.

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