IIM Bangalore EPGP Sample Essays

IIM B EPGP Winning Sample Essay – 1

IIM Bangalore EPGP: Statement Of Purpose

I’ve 5 years of experience in IT domain as a ERP consultant working for Automobile, Telecom and Life sciences industry. After 5 years of experience want to fulfill the skill and business knowledge gaps in my profile to achieve my long term goal of being the first female CXO in india’s IT industry.

I have always believed that challenges are opportunities to learn and grow. The first big challenge I remember in my life was stage fear in high school which I overcame by relentless practice and performing on stage every day. This experience has defined my spirit to fight and pursue my dreams more passionately to carve out a successful career for myself in technology sector. I started my career at TCS and then moved onto Accenture where I delivered results in several challenging projects. One of my early success stories was when my team and I designed a custom inventory allocation tool for a big client. Our client was facing several cases of lost sales from premium customers due to absence of any stock allocation strategy. My team and I proposed a custom allocation tool to distribute supply to the customers in order of predefined priorities. The idea was well received by the management and asked us to develop and deploy in 2 months. The subsequent days were the most hectic days of my life where I led by example, solved one challenge after another while managing client deliverables on time. This project fetched me and my team the prestigious ‘Accenture Excellence Award’.

In 2016, when my career was flying high, I started showing symptoms of a rare chronic illness “Fibromyalgia” which causes violent attacks of muscle pain, fatigue and depression. After 3 months, I was not even able to perform basic tasks like combing my hair or stand up for 10 mins let alone perform in a demanding career. It was clear that medication was not working and I had to take a break from my career. Determined to regain my health, I took to physiotherapy and started ballet. With the blisters, bunions and pulled muscles, every day in class seemed to be filled with a new challenge. Over time, Ballet taught me how to deal with the pain, rise up and become tougher and stronger person which ultimately helped me overcome my illness. Now, I am a regular volunteer at make a wish foundation where I share my experience, strength, and hope with other kids suffering from chronic and life-challenging diseases.

After a 10 month long break, I joined Deloitte where I lead a team of 6 to optimize system performance. After the long break I was eager to make my mark again delivered performance which were recognized with an award for exemplary performance by my senior management. I now aspire to fly higher, and I believe IIM B’s EPGP program would be a perfect place for me to acquire the skills I need to accelerate my career again. I want to learn from the best professors like J Ramachandran about business strategy and development. I would like to join IIMB’s FOCAL & WIM clubs to hone my team management and leadership skills. I look forward to leveraging all the classroom learning combined with my 5 years of experience to help me achieve my future goals.

I have had a setback and I believe I came out stronger. My experience of struggle with a life threatening disease have given me a very different perspective on life, which I believe can share with my class to enrich my peers learning experience at IIM B.

IIM B EPGP Winning Sample Essay – 2

IIM Bangalore EPGP: Statement Of Purpose

Into its seventh year, my career has evolved from the production floor to store sales to planning an international fast fashion business. Each move up to my current role has been to get a deeper understanding of business principles and to be able to handle a business myself. Now the closer I progress to the next level, the more the demand for understanding business increases. I have reached here by learning and working hard, but the next position in line- that of a Business Manager requires me to gain business education. 

 Also, from here, I want my career to take a greater international focus. I wish to follow a road that gives me a chance to work across varied markets and cultures. To learn how a brand/product needs to adapt itself while entering a new market, while still keeping its core values intact.  

To do this, I aim to work in a strategic planning profile for a consumer product or retail organization. The position should look at tuning business tactics for existing or upcoming territories. Such a position will expose me to multiple business environments and the impacts of global events on markets. My previous experience with retail, planning and product across borders pooled with formal management training should come handy while dealing with challenges such a job may present. Over a period of next five years, I plan to gain knowledge of products while working on suppliers’ strategy, as well as interact with diverse markets and consumers.  

This combined experience, across the three major aspects of any business, over a longer period should help propel my career into a senior management role that will involve rolling out global/regional operations into new or emerging markets. I finally see that culminating into my taking independent charge of a complete territory or business. 

Once I developed the need for studying business and deduced all the experiences I desire to gain from such a program, I didn’t have to choose IIM-Bangalore. It chose itself. 

EPGP will help build on my existing experience in South-East Asia and India. I seek to use this familiarity to become better suited for most businesses that club India and the South-East Asian regions as a single business unit.  

Academically, electives such as International Business, Corporate Strategy and Business Forecasting will help me gain knowledge that I feel missing in my arsenal. 

The program will give me an opportunity to utilize the international immersion and interpret my studies and past practices from a global perspective. It will aid me refine the attitude of observing across borders- something very essential for my targeted career. 

By working with high-caliber individuals with know-how of varied cultures, geographies and walks of life, I will labor to gain more flexibility and cross-functional understanding. This will assist me to calculate the numerous factors while planning a wide-reaching business. 

I will take complete advantage of the location of Bangalore as it houses the corporate headquarters of major retailers in India. There is nothing like being able to attend classes in the day and approach industry in the evening. Furthermore, the timing couldn’t have been better, with FDI open to international retailers, India will soon need leaders in the field in coming years and I plan to make the most of it. 

My career choice requires a comprehensive understanding of management and EPGP’s emphasis on general management is a perfect tie-up.  

Integrating the global stance, first-rate peer culture, aptness of the location for my targeted turf and unrivaled education value of IIM-Bangalore, I am sure I can make a meaningful transition into a corporate strategic profession.