Transcend: Rise to the next level!
“A mentor is a torch bearer. One who shows you the way and how to navigate. Someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.” With this belief, the Indo-German Training Centre along with its Alumni Catalyst team, is proud to launch “Transcend”, a mentoring initiative by the IGTCians for the IGTCians!
The idea is to facilitate a detailed 5 months programme starting from September 2022 – January 2023 between the full-time PGPBA students and the seasoned IGTC Alumni, who are industry professionals. The IGTC Alumni bring in years of experience, expertise, and learnings to groom the rookies, while the rookies bring in a lot of energy, enthusiasm and new ideas to the table to stimulate conversations and challenge status quo.
To ensure that there is a solid basis for the mentorship programme, one of the key responsibilities of the mentor is to adopt a group of PGPBA students and help them with the planning and execution of their final Integrated Business Project. The learning outcomes of this project are centred around the ability of the students to apply the theoretical concepts learnt and the critical insights gained at IGTC in all domains – Marketing, Operations, HR and Finance – to a live business project.
As soon as the project was announced, it was a delight to see that IGTCians across the past 3 decades came forth to volunteer their time and keen interest to participate in the programme. One month into the programme, here is some candid feedback from the mentors:
“My team is on track on their project. We have a weekly meeting and share updates of the status regularly. All the students are sharp, hardworking and keen learners. I think we need to take the mentoring program beyond the project too.” Rayomand Karkaria, Finance Head, Siemens Ltd., PGPBA Alumnus 1994
“A month ago, we started this program and it is truly going in line with your dreams. These young turks are really commendable in terms of their commitments, interest, eagerness to learn new things. Working with such young people has really made me learn more new things.” Vishwanath Kittur, Senior Manager, JSW Infrastructure, PGPBA Alumnus 2010
“It’s been a great experience mentoring the batch. They are matured and well prepared with what is expected from them. This enterprising attitude will sure help them grow leaps and bounds in their journey ahead.”
Ashwini Mishra, Manager, Armstrong Dematic, PGPBA Alumnus 2016
“Some great collective and interactive sessions are going on. I liked the responsiveness from the team for the project preparations. It is very visible that the students are getting well developed academically as well as on the professional front. Indeed, the esteemed faculties are honing them well, and outcome can be very well seen. It is a great learning for me also for recollecting the knowledge. Thanks for all the IGTC team is doing!!! Rahul Deshak, Director Operations, Collins Aerospace, EBMP Alumnus 2018
Here is what some of the mentees from PGPBA Batch 2021 – 2023 had to say:
“We had our 1st meeting with Aakanksha Varude. It was great getting introduced to inspiring personality like her. Thank you so much for the mentor-mentee program! Awdoot Kamble
“The conversation with Mahesh sir gave us good food-for-thought on our project. His experience really gives us a path. Despite the USA – India distance, there was no awkwardness in the meeting, no barriers in the exchange of knowledge and thought. We will surely get the most out of this mentor mentee initiative.” Saniya Mansuri
“Manish sir really liked our idea and shared his experience and knowledge on approaching the Capstone Project in a methodical way. He encouraged us to explore various data sources and interpret them in relevance to the project. The programme has definitely helped us to find a direction.” Sanika Phatak
“Our mentor Prasad Nawathe gave us the much-needed reality check and direction to the project. We spent time in planning the work and preparing a task list for the same. We feel that as a team, the mentor and us, are a perfect match and we can make good use of his valuable time and experience. Excited to see this collaboration unfold!” Nikhil Anandsekhar
“It is great to see some of you take time out of your busy schedules to mentor the IGTC students on their Business Plans. When I did my interim review, I found that the groups were more logical in their understanding of the market compared to the past. They had a clearer understanding of what is their offering to the customer and market. The PESTLE Analysis & Five Forces Analysis in most cases was well done, but in some cases the SWOT Analysis had conceptual errors of whether a particular fact could be a strength or an opportunity or there was an interchange between weakness and threat. Kudos to the Alumni Mentors and the Alumni Catalysts for launching this initiative.” Sagar Narsian, Marketing Faculty, IGTC
The entire credit for this initiative goes to the four extremely focused Alumni Catalysts –
Abhishek Gupta, Ashutosh Tewari, Gary Chandy and Urvil Matalia, who have shouldered the responsibility of conceptualizing, connecting to the mentors and executing this initiative along with Radhieka R Mehta.
IGTC plans to take this mentoring initiative to the next level by engaging mentors for different levels of alumni – e.g. if somebody is moving from individual contributor to a team management role, if somebody is entering into a mid-management role and if someone is moving from mid management to senior management roles. Because, after all, “today the lines between mentoring and networking are blurring. Welcome to the world of mentworking” Julie Winkle Giulioni
