Meet the IPMX Class of 2024: Aishwarya Kumar, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow

Aishwarya Kumar

Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow

School: Army Public School

‘An artist in a mathematics class’, I’m a finance professional/MBA student by day and a storyteller by night.”

Hometown: New Delhi, Delhi

Fun Fact About Yourself: When asked about their school, most students may have taken a little less than 2 seconds to type in their answer. Funnily enough, I took a whole minute – as I tried to figure out exactly which school out of the 10 I had attended was needed here. And this is not the first time something like this has happened. Being a ‘defence kid’ and having grown up across 10 different cities, I carry with me 10x worth of experiences, values and mindsets acquired over my formative years. That, and I have a love-hate relationship with change – where I embrace it with open arms yet never fail to get cold feet on the face of it.

Undergraduate School and Major: Maitreyi College, Delhi University

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Chief Manager, Product Strategy and Management – Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance Co. Ltd.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of IIM Lucknow’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? It was the opportunity to study subjects I had wanted to learn about but never found the time or the energy to, coupled with my lifelong quest of trying to develop expertise in something I love brought me to the IPMX program. Once that decision was made, choosing IIM Lucknow, with its well-renowned name in the country for its quality of education and pedagogy, was almost a no-brainer.

What has been your favorite course or extracurricular activity at IIM Lucknow? What has been the most important lesson that you have learned from it?  The ability to perform under extreme pressure situations – in the wake of messed up sleep cycles, little-to-no food intake and crazy schedules that seem to last beyond 24 hours – seems like the biggest extra-curricular activity that we all have learnt here at IPMX!

Life as an IPMX student changes so rapidly around us – we barely have time to keep track of our surroundings. And while everything around us changes in the blink of an eye – courses, faculty, classrooms, exams – the experience of living through it all and putting our best foot forward, day after day, is something which will always stay with us even years after we graduate.

What excites you the most about the International Immersion? At IPMX, I am fortunate to learn with 106 other diverse minds from all over the country and their own set of life experiences. International Immersion just adds 100 new variables to this equation!

The International Immersion program enables us to meet students and faculty from the other side of the world, gain insights from their lives, and a fresh new perspective on solving problems – whether in academics or in real life. It helps that the international immersion is one of the most talked about aspects of this course, vouched for by our seniors and faculty alike.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Education means different things to different people. On your path to building a career, you take some correct decisions and some not-so-correct ones. I made my share of incorrect decisions when I chose a profession that I did not have the aptitude or the expertise to pursue. I had been a budding actuarial science student working as a consultant in one of the Big 4 firms, only to realize 3 years into my journey that the job and the subject wasn’t meant for me.

Without taking too much time, armed with my carefully curated adaptability to change over my formative years, I decided to switch gears and take a complete U turn. I tried my hands at the then completely alien world of product management and marketing. After having discovered the path, I found success as well as love for my job – at the same time! Now is that anything less than an accomplishment?

What do you hope to do after graduation? After graduating from IIM Lucknow, I hope to be able to carry this bucket load of skills and concepts learnt with me over the course of a year to try and build a career in the world of marketing and customer experience.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into IIM Lucknow? Have your application tell your story – not the facts (you’ll be submitting the documents anyway) – but the story… your story. What makes you choose the MBA life? What motivates you? How did you get here?

This is the only way you stand out in a crowd of people with near perfect GMAT scores, sharp communication skills, stellar work experience and maybe multiple certifications.

DON’T MISS: MEET THE INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT LUCKNOW’S IPMX CLASS OF 2024