Mr. Kiran Karunakaran,
IBS Bangalore, (‘00)

Marketing Specialist
E.I. Dupont Denemours & Co.

Kiran and His Family

I along with my wife-Sweety, and one year old daughter Gia, currently live in Shanghai, PRC.  We enjoy traveling, photography and reading.
 
Sojourn in IBS

I graduated in 2000 from IBS Bangalore and joined a dotcom start-up that doesn’t exist anymore. Here, at Synesis Online Pvt. Ltd., an e-commerce company primarily involved in the B2C space I was responsible for growing the portal’s revenue to $1 million within 11 months and was involved in the restructuring and sell off that followed. A year later when the bubble burst, I moved to Bharti Telecom in their investment planning division and worked on setting up the fixed-line business for the South India region. At Bharti Telecom, I was involved in market & investment planning and was part of the core team that was involved in the valuation, due-diligence and funding for setting up Bharti’s fixed-line operations in India.

The urge to keep learning and the quest for growth led me to pursue an international MBA and I went back to school in 2003. After a year at HEC School of Management, Paris & a year at Michigan Business School, Ann Arbor MI, I obtained my MBA and joined DuPont & Co to lead their internal consulting practice in Asia. Ever since I have been based in Shanghai and currently lead the strategy division of a $150 Million business with businesses all across the region.

Handling High Pressure Situations

Everyone develops ways to deal with pressure, and in my case, I realize that it drives me to excel and push the boundaries even further. Pressure brings out the best in me and therefore dealing with it has actually become very pleasurable. In dealing with tight deadlines, resource constraints, constant travel and management expectations, I try and focus on a very simple approach – Prioritization. It is my belief that once you are able to step back and see the big picture, it becomes quite natural and easy to set a priority level on all tasks at hand. Once you have done this all one has to do is fall back on the good old Paretto Principle and focus on the 20% that has maximum impact. Much like the approach all of us take while preparing for a class assignment or a term paper.
    
Balancing Work and Family

I honestly believe that the entire deal of work-life balance is an over-hyped one and that too much effort has been put into making a big issue out of it. “Balancing” work with life or vice-versa is a choice that is dependent on an individual or a family and needs to be managed based on personal needs. There are times where the family needs more attending to and there are other times where work needs more attention. As a family we try and spend as much time as we can and make it a point to have dinner together when I am not traveling. Sundays are considered off-days for both me and my wife and we eat out and spend the day out as much as we can. After our daughter was born, I and my wife have devised “date nights” every Friday evening as a way to get some quality time together and this has helped greatly too.
 
Mantra for De-stressing

Our idea of relaxation is travel. Both I and my wife enjoy travel and we try and take two vacations a year. Usually we head out to a place we’ve never been before and spend the vacation imbibing the local cuisine and culture. On a more regular basis, I try and golf as a means to relax, but this hasn’t been possible a lot since Gia arrived in our lives.

Ideals and Lessons life has taught

“Think Real Big” – Has been my biggest lesson in life. I have realized that as life progresses, all of us gather baggage and set glass ceilings that we are scared to shatter. I have learnt from my experience that every time I have overcome this ceiling, bigger and better things have awaited me on the next floor. So it’s important to always keep gauging if where you are is where you want to be – if not, get up and break that glass ceiling.
 
My dad has always been the most positive influence on my life. He stands for all those virtues that I aspire to possess, all those achievements that I strive to accomplish and all those values that I live to portray. His belief in me and constant support in my ability has been a driver of my personal and professional progress thus far and I would believe my life’s mission complete if I was to feel that I have accomplished half of what he has.
 
Manufacturing Sector and India’s Contribution to it

The strength of the Manufacturing sector indicates the long-term sustainability of growth in any country’s economy. All large economies have traditionally had strong manufacturing and I believe for India to sustain its GDP growth of about 9%, it is important that this sector recovers and registers growth of at least mid teens. Japan, China, Korea and other major economies in Asia have a significant value-added lead over India currently and for India to be able to get back on track would require strong support by means of favorable tax regimes and also by way of encouraging FDI flows in this sector.

The fundamentals clearly favor India to do well in this sector. A burgeoning middle class and a highly skilled work force are impossible to ignore and so is the relatively stronger IP policy that encourages MNCs with stringent IP requirements to prefer it over its biggest competitor China.

In conclusion – my take is that the outlook for the next 5 years is bullish. Lack of political will and infrastructure are in my opinion the only two factors that could hamper the growth of India’s manufacturing sector.
 
Friends @ IBS

I had a fairly small, yet closely knit group of friends while at IBS and I continue to stay in touch with most of these folks. We are all at different corners of the world today but when we do get to meet, time still seems to have been frozen in 1998. I commend the school’s alumni relations officers and all those involved in bringing the alumni together and hope that the community not only grows in size but also is able to contribute effectively to building the brand of IBS worldwide.
 
Words for the young starters

In one strip of the comic, Calvin & Hobbes, Calvin tells his stuffed tiger Hobbes - “The choices that one makes determines what the next set of choices will be and once you’ve made that choice, there’s little telling if you will ever be faced with the same choice again and these choices like forks of a road keep branching out. So where you end up finally comes back to the first choice you made.”

So be very, very choosy about the first choice you make in your career. I know that this sounds like an idyllic advice from someone who doesn’t have to worry about it anymore and that when the placement season is half done; none of this philosophy makes any sense. But, just make sure you realize the scale of impact that this one decision will have on the rest of your life before you make it.