For whom it May Concern
Mr KSM and I share a similar educational lineage. In 2002 he completed his under graduate education in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, India. This was a year after I had completed my under graduation from the same institute with a major in civil engineering.
I have observed K to be not only an attentive listener but also a diligent learner ever since my first interaction with him since 1998. These two traits of his, extended equally to the curricular training offered by an IIT, as also to the co-curricular elements that comes with a hostel life in an IIT campus. It is understandable, for readers of this reference letter, to have an apprehension of a bias in this assessment of Mr M. With this in mind, even before writing this letter, I had an extensive interview with him for over an hour. In that conversation, to buttress my conviction about him, I grilled him on his career history and goals. K impressed me again in that conversation, like he did the very first time I met him, with the clarity in his career objectives and his zeal to listen, learn and implement. The conversation left me convinced not only about my beliefs, but also in Mr M’s abilities and unquestionable eligibility to deserve a place in the CMU campus community.
After his engineering education, K joined the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the first Indian Fortune 500 petroleum company. This, despite having a safer option to join his own family business in Punjab, India. I believe such a step, shows his willingness to take risks in expectation of learning the details of business, real-time and on field, working as nothing more than a salaried employee of a large conglomerate. Those are the learnings he carried forward with him later on, as he joined the GS Group in early 2004, as a Director of business development. The GS Group, K’s family enterprise, is a diversified entity transacting in cement, automobiles and petroleum distribution with an annual turnover of $ 12.5 mn. This figure is around 0.04% of the annual turnover of K's previous employer, that of IOC. The shift in the quantum of business and responsibilities, K subsequently handled, is evident in this small calculation itself.
Contrary to perceptions, joining a family business brings with itself, huge responsibilities, a keen desire to succeed while taking measured risks, offering to an individual only a thin line of cushion between success and failure. While exuding an entrepreneurial urge, I find K excelling in all of these, delivering with élan in his new role. It is through individuals like him, that today, India’s emerging economy, expects to surge forward in its growth figures, while not forgetting the socially responsible role of a corporate individual.
In entirety, I thus believe, that K should be looked as a candidate, who comes with the business toughening offered by a large conglomerate (through his IOC stint), an entrepreneurial urge (that the current GS Group role has nurtured in him), and a rational mind relying always on reason to solve problems (from his IIT education).
An international MBA programme as offered by The Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, I believe should not miss out this opportunity to induct a candidate like him into its rolls of students. His perspectives from an emerging economy like India should usher in a symbiotic process -- the school’s rich and diverse student pool benefiting from him as much as Mr M shall from Tepper’s respected training in managerial skills.
A Word about Myself
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I write this letter in the capacity of being a doctoral student and member of the Carnegie Mellon fraternity -- with a wish that CMU inducts in its rolls, the best of students. Currently, I work with Professor Ashish Arora at the Heinz School researching in issues related to the economics of technological change. Before joining Carnegie Mellon, I was working as a business journalist for a couple of years with India’s leading business daily, The Economic Times, Mumbai, India. This, after I had completed my engineering and management education in India, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee and the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. Please feel free to contact me for any clarifications through an email at chirantan@cmu.edu or a telephone call at 001-412-720-8128.
2 questions:
- am i endowed, or capable of writing a reference letter?
- was i fair and focussed enough in this version, doing justice to the cause!
~i dont think i will ever know!
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