Ex-MBA and Beyond. INSEAD MBA (Robin Hood Scholar). Consumer Startups Business Samurai. Finalist, World Championship of Public Speaking 2018 (Speech Link). Ex-Management Consultant. Movie Junkie.
LinkedIn | GMATClub Reviews |Poets & Quants Reviews
Saagar is a South India-born North-Indian who grew up in Saudi Arabia. An INSEAD MBA, most recently worked with the founder of one of the fastest growing Indian startups, on incubating new businesses and scaling them to US$5M in 12 months.
A typical "Indian-engineer-turned-business-guy", Saagar started his career as a strategy consultant at KPMG where his work on consumer projects spanned interacting with Singaporean business leaders to interviewing rebel leaders in Orissa. Later, he held leadership roles in growth and product at multiple consumer tech startups, where he learnt career and life lessons. These lessons led to a reflection of his life goals and philosophy, which he crafted into a story called "Cracks" - a story that resonated with thousands, carrying him to the nationals of World Championship of Public Speaking and helped him build a compelling application to secure admission at his dream B-School, INSEAD. (Link to the talk - bit.ly/cracks_kintsugi).
At INSEAD, he continued evangelizing storytelling as the President of the public speaking and storytelling clubs, initiating the concept of "Storytelling sessions", while also volunteering to help several classmates create their own stories to crack dream opportunities. In parallel, he started helping people in crafting their business school applications and refining their job application pitches. One thing led to another and he has helped numerous candidates over the last 5 years.
The privilege to be a part of their successes has been incredibly fulfilling and he seeks to continue helping more people in future. He is an avid reader and loves being on the stage with a mic. His claim to fame is being able to recite Harry Potter books by-heart and winning multiple Pani Puri eating competitions.
IIM-Calcutta MBA. Customer Success Ninja. Published Author. Social Impact Enthusiast. History Buff.
AV is from Chennai. He has done his engineering in NIT Trichy where he polished his writing by helping create and then helming the 50-year-old campus’s monthly magazine. He then did his MBA in IIM Calcutta (achieving a 99.99% in CAT-English) where his marketing-narrative analysis papers were published as part of an anthology marketing textbook.
After college, AV worked in various industries E-Commerce, Cement, Yarn and Fashion. Taking a break from the corporate world, AV published papers in CSR as part of his work in social sector consulting. He then worked at CEB (now Gartner) in the Marketing Research department – writing guides and papers for Fortune 500 CMOs.
Finally, AV is now Heading Customer Success for EU region at one of the world’s largest Cybersecurity and IT services firms. AV has been able to help multiple people craft their MBA applications with his down-to-earth, writing skill and subtle humour. He is an avid history buff and draws great leadership lessons from here. He is currently working on narrative podcasts in his spare time to help people with anxiety and panic attacks.
