Anurag

About me

Born and brought up in Kolkata, I am a Chartered Accountant by academic qualification. Married to Sonia  since Feb'12 and have a sweet 9 month old daughter Dhwani.

My professional journey so far

I started my professional journey with the Audit & Assurance vertical of Deloitte Haskins & Sells in Aug'05. Worked on statutory audit and risk management projects involving clients such as Tata Steel, TCS, Voltas, Tata Martrade Logistics (a port handling company) etc. Quite boring , trust me ! Audit stands for "All You Do Is Ticking" and can kill any CA to death. However I was overawed by the sheer scale and complexity of the operations of these companies in operation and got a lot of insights into their business processes.

Then moved onto Corporate Finance of ITC Ltd in Nov'07 where I spent an year working on strategic projects across sectors such as FMCG, Hotels, IT, Paper & Paperboards etc. Strategy is quite vague and always fraught with uncertainty. You spend a month preparing a report on prospects of the company venturing into a random product, say, Skimmed Milk Powder and then the management suddenly shelves the plans to go ahead with it. The predictable part was the financial statement analysis of competitors across all business segments, trend analysis of costs and learnt how Indian companies often manage earnings through change of accounting policies 

My tryst with Tata Steel started in Dec'08 where we were put on a project to prepare financial forecasting models for Corus (Tata Steel Europe). These models captured intricacies of steel making (hot metal, liquid steel, casting,rolling etc) at UK and Netherlands , from a costing standpoint and moved onto accounting for derivatives. As Corus bled through the European recession, we  had a tough time working out numbers that could help bankers continue to fund the company and our Board believe that the company could sail though these turbulent times

Finally, moved to the mining business of Aditya Birla Group in July'11 where I have been working on M&A deals and Revenue Pricing for Private Public Partnership (PPP) opportunities in coal mining. Also thanks to some wonderful bosses, I moved into operations as part of a greenfield project implementation of a 20 MTPA Bhubaneshwari Coal MDO project for Mahanadi Coalfields (MCL) in Orissa. This has been my first interaction with a cross-functional team and learnt to appreciate the the role engineers and marketing guys play in a company. Worked on negotiation deals with vendors such as Caterpillar and L&T-Komatsu etc and this was a unique experience altogether.

Why did I decide to take the PGPX plunge? Was it sudden or pre-planned?

"So you are a usual 'run of the mill' Chartered Accountant from Kolkata . Pretty predictable path so far. Then why MBA? "

That what an IIM-B professor had asked me during the IIM-B interview. Actually, I really had no definite answers for this.

I have always believed in the concepts embedded in  the book - "The Alchemist" and believe that every people whom we randomly meet are actually agents to take us to our ultimate destinations. So, at a point where a the usual path for any professional would have been to eventually book a second flat or buy a car, I decided to plunge into uncharted territories and experience PGPX@IIMA. You meet so many new people randomly and never know the role they might play in your lives and make you do things you alone could have never imagined.  Maybe they will help me move into a role where I can realise my true potential, maybe they can help me turn into an entrepreneur

It was quite sudden; I had taken my GMAT in Sep'10 and had kept on postponing the MBA decision - marriage, children ,job etc. Suddenly saw a news clipping in ET this July related to Amazon recruiting the 1 year courses across IIM A/B/C , explored the IIMs website, saw that this was my last year of score validity and decided to give it as shot ; happily, there was no application fee @ IIMA :) . Applied to B and C as well for interview practice. Thats how random it was. 

Any interesting aspect of my PGPX interview that I would like to share

My interview was at Bangalore on 19th Oct

The first question itself was a bouncer.

Extempore on "Development is the euphemism for unbridled and insatiable consumption" . 

It was a pure economics topic and I really don't know how I managed to stay afloat. The professors were really patient and kept on listening to my arguments. Finally I could make them move to other prepared answers such as Coalgate Scam, why MBA, why IIMA etc

Where do I see myself at the end of the course?

Quite confused about that. I want to explore a lot of things in course of this one year.

Want to live the student life again. Campus, lecture, cases, professors, paper and pen exams.

Waiting to see what kind of companies turn up at the campus. Praying for NaMo victory. Maybe move into a role where I can realise my true potential, maybe consulting, though quite doubtful about the impact on lifestyle and family life it might have

Wanna turn into an entrepreneur in the long term

The non-work side of me

Actively associated with the alumni of my school- Don Bosco, college-St Xaviers' and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India I love blogging. You can visit my blog Anurag Unplugged  (http://catchanurag.blogspot.in/) and the Emotional Express (http://theemotionalexpress.blogspot.in/).

Also as a CSR initiative for my CA students, I have launched CA Job Portal (http://www.cajobportal.com/). This is the first website of its kind exclusively for CAs and has attracted 140,000+ pageviews in the last 6 months. It has helped a lot of my students get into companies such as Titan, Grant Thorton etc as well as a number of PSUs and in this recession, someone getting a  job is sheer delight

I am associated with Art of Living of Sri Sri fame; passionate about to so such an extent that I spoke about the our projects for tribal children in Ghatshila, Jharkhand and the legendary stress-buster Sudarshan Kriya for 5 minutes in my IIMA interview.

Anything else that you would love to hear from me !!

                   

Keep watching this space, sure lot of exciting things in store in this mecca of education , would share as i explore!