Why do I attend Convocation Ceremony every year?
Today my life: Hello, I am Prashant Goswami currently working as a vice president in the food marketing section of Nestle, one of the top-ranked Fortune 500 companies. Nestle is a dream company of every PGDM student to work in, and this is a milestone of my life.
I have reached here with a sincere hard work of 19 years in the marketing field after getting a degree convocation certificate for my PGDM in marketing program in 2000. Today my office is in New York on the 20th floor of Nestle building, I earn roughly around 80 lakhs per annum in Indian currency, have purchased two Mercedes cars, owns one big 3 bedroom apartment in New York and one house in India for my parents. To sum up I am living with all pleasure with full contentment.
By seeing my present life no one can sense or percept my dark phases of life, but I have seen the darkest phase in my life, during my school and college days in Assam around two decades earlier. My life changed entirely due to one B-school in Delhi and I pay gratitude by making my presence on every year on the college convocation ceremony since my graduation convocation ceremony in 2001.
My life before two decade: As I have mentioned my native is Assam state, and I come from a remote village in Guwahati. My family had 10 members, we lived in one room set with no toilet, and we had to go out to defecate. The room size was even smaller than my current office cabin, even my washroom at my New York apartment is bigger than that. My father worked as a daily wage worker and my mother worked as a domestic help in other houses, and even in my wildest dream, I haven’t had dreamt that my life will take a U-turn of this dimension.
Very often I cry to remember those days when my parents were making efforts to arrange two times food for our family, and here in New York, me and my wife do dieting to shed some weight which we have put on due to overeating.
My parents never compromised with my studies and they made sure that I must get every books and notes on time. They wanted me to excel in my life to erase the family’s misery completely.
My Days after my graduation in 1997: After my graduation in 1997 for one complete year, I was in trauma, my skills were not considered adept enough to get even a graded job anywhere. Often I prayed to God for some idea so that I could come out of this mess and become a strong support system for my parents.
Those were the days when India had just opened its market for the entire world. After 1991 the then Finance Minister Shri. Manmohan Singh gave a true gift to India by stopping the License raj system and adopted the liberalization, privatization and globalization (LPG) system. Then many multinational companies started business through either FDI or FII in India to capture the mammoth market, and that created huge job vacancies. Through this, the craze of the PGDM program started building up in among graduates and even in working employees.
So this was the God’s idea for me, I thought to get enrol for the PGDM program. I started preparation for the CAT examination, worked really hard and studied for even 12-14 hrs a day. My motto of life was somehow to get admission in the best PGDM college of India.
When the result was declared I secured 95 percentile, I was happy with the performance. Now my task was to figure out the best college for the PGDM program. I analysed many colleges and then figured out Asia Pacific Institute of Management (AIM), New Delhi, although this college was established just two years earlier but a couple of things attracted me was its prime location, well-learned faculties, 100% placement of previous batch in 1998, and last but not the least one of the student from this college was hired by TISCO for the highest salary, Tisco which now called as TATA steel was one of my prominent choice of employers to work.
I got enrolled in for the PGDM in marketing program in AIM, New Delhi in 1998-2000 batch. Those two years are still the most cherished phases of life, I still remember them and become nostalgic about my friendship and feel good.
This college helped in making me suitable for the managerial work and college management worked a lot on my personality and body language. Faculties and Guest faculties mould me for the hectic corporate work. AIM culture ingrained in me the habit of English talking in me, which I was reluctant off earlier.
In my final year, guess what I got a job offer from TISCO itself as a management trainee post and from there my life transformed entirely, I reached Nestle now. My batch had the graduation convocation ceremony in 2001, and I started living the life which I could not have imagined. I give every credit to the AIM and its working faculty members and its well crafted PGDM curriculum program based on the current dated business orientation. So from 2001 onwards, I took a vow to attend its degree convocation every year to pay my gratitude towards this institute.
This year also I will attend the XXII convocation ceremony on 14th October 2019, for which I have already book my flight tickets and even I will meet my parents. Now the same AIM has grown up to its new height, It got13th rank amongst all B-school of northern India, and still, it has maintained the 100 % placement track record. With all these, I will also inform you guys that, next year is special for me and my AIM, it will be its silver jubilee year. It has stood tall against everything for two and a half-decade, without compromising its standards and its viewpoint for which the founders had established this institution.
I am proud AIMian