Career Ys – Enriching Minds, Empowering People – Enhancing Careers
I returned to India a couple of years ago after a long period abroad for education and work. There was a dilemma whether to take up a job again or go for entrepreneurship. I sent my CV to seemingly resume and mail black holes! During the endless wait, I thought I should also look at entrepreneurship as an option. Pondering over various ideas, training, development and personnel related spheres seemed attractive.
Great idea – but in common business parlance, it was a deep bloody red ocean. Almost anybody and everybody seems to be a headhunter [like 20 real estate agents lining up for a single property claiming exclusive right of keys] and offer a laundry list of trainings. Back to the drawing board – specialization is critical. With my professional experience in supply chain management, operations and business process re-engineering, I focussed on these areas to make a difference. I started using my contacts in the logistics industry to gain a foot in the door. Some doors did open up. One TGIF meeting with one of my ex-bosses over a couple of beers, he asked me whether I had some service for students in formative years. On probing, he mentioned that his daughter is in Class 8, and he needed guidance on planning next steps for her education and supporting classes to attain her career goals. I slept over it for the weekend and suddenly, I had my eureka moment.
I went through the battery of assessments I had for corporates and started tweaking them in the Indian context and tailor them bearing in mind a student’s mindset. My mother’s background as a teacher for the specially abled children and her journals on child psychology helped me fast forward the process. Being a certified Predictive Index analyst helped and I tapped on to those networks as well to fine-tune my assessment patterns. The subsequent weekend, I decided to take my ex-bosses’ daughter as a test case. At the end of it, my boss had an ‘aha’ moment and said that you have decoded my daughter completely in half a day. Allow me to quote him, “Nagraj, you have done so many good things for personal development. You are well versed with change management and have gone through 2 M&A processes. You slogged and took extra credits during your MBA. Corporate spend on training will be discretionary and there are well established players in the business already. You need to focus more on the student community as a value creator and you may find your Blue Ocean Strategy for longer term success”
The equity markets were extremely sluggish in the 2011-2013 period and a lot of retail investors had literally lost hope of even recovering their principal amounts invested in mutual funds, equities and ETFs. My preparations for CFA were in progress and I was more than happy to help people within the known circles. I went through articles in the blogosphere and saw a lot of quacks canvassing ‘tips’ or stock forecasts that were completely wrong. The reason being those forecasts were based on prevailing pedagogy whilst market realities have changed drastically from the time bailout packages have become routine affairs. I started blogging actively and created my blog https://niftyparadox.blogspot.in/. My wife’s experience in Credit Suisse helped fast forward things on this front. The blog has been and will always be free. However, we keep getting a lot of requests for tips and that is something we discourage. Our principle is that people should learn to do analysis on their own. It has taken us over 2 years to work out a simple and easy to digest 2 day training program. We plan to launch that program from June 2015.
Around the same time, I started getting invites from local business schools to conduct lectures on supply chain management and operations management. As a visiting faculty, I went in to the classroom and was appalled, to say the least to see the employability quotient of students and grudges of recruiters. Whilst I still continue as a visiting faculty, I realized that the root cause lay in how students are groomed during formative years. I attended some more training sessions to work with students effectively but I also needed more data points. Merely success with one student could not be a representative sample. I scouted around schools in Navi Mumbai and approached principals. I offered my assessment services gratis. Most principals were open-minded about the same as the services were complimentary. Over the next 6 months, I spent a good deal of time with students, parents, teachers and managed over 200 assessments. With a few tweaks, I managed to make the profiling system robust and thus was born a baby Career Ys
The Y represents the dilemma people face at career crossroads and Ys implies affirmative action for positive career development. I felt that I am in a position to take this venture to the next level. I approached schools and parents offering my services. Of course the response levels did drop the moment the service became ‘charged’ but that was a boon in disguise. These were extremely involved parents who went beyond the rat race of Engineer/CA/Doctor etc.
Their attitude was “Help me understand what is good for my child and next steps for the same”. The patrons who subscribed were very serious and involved parents, making the exercise very fruitful.
Also with my INSEAD background, I got some requests for assistance with GRE / GMAT and guidance for the admissions process. So in the evolutionary process over the last 2 years, we have decided to specialize in 2 areas
Right Brain Activities [Career Counselling Activities]
Career Counselling for Students in Formative Years. 360 degree profiling with feedback on potential career paths, study regimes, personal development plans. A holistic personality development service focusing on all-round development of the child.
GRE / GMAT and Education Abroad – 360 degree profiling, SWOT analysis, Financial Planning, Admissions Counselling – a holistic and realistic development plan
Left Brain Activities [Technical Analysis & Derivatives on NSE]
A 2 day workshop in which we will train you to be completely self-dependent on making the right financial decisions and trade confidently, ignoring all the noise from media.
I am yet to form a website for the same. Nevertheless, I am sharing with the community an article that may be useful. I have also attached my bio and sample reports that are generated after the counselling process.
With Parents in Sanjeevani School, Kharghar
With Best Personal Regards
Nagraj Baggon
@NiftyParadox