Journey from delivering newspapers to IIM Rohtak

A remarkable journey of Rakesh Kunbi, 29 years old, who made it to IIM Rohtak
facing the odds right from a young age. Reminiscing early experiences he said, "My
grandfather was a mill worker while my father was a Homeguard officer in Mumbai.
The main source of our family income ceased after the shutdown of a few mills in
2005. It was a difficult period for our family". At this juncture of life, 16 years old
Rakesh took up the job of delivering newspapers in order to manage family expenses
but the zeal he possessed for acquiring knowledge helped him to parallelly manage
education.
While in twelfth standard, Rakesh realized that the burden of paying for siblings and
his education has landed on his shoulders. He said "Taking up the responsibility, I
started as a caterer for 'Umang caterers' on weekends and gradually worked as a full-
time employee there. I had to procure a team of 30 to 50 depending upon the scale of
the events where I learned the art of managing people, networking and building up
relationships. Also, I realized the importance of loyalty and trust amongst the team in
the business world to ensure the success of a given event".
After successfully completing high school through ups and downs, the doors to work
for a call center at Mindspace, Mumbai got opened and to ensure his studies didn’t
suffer, Rakesh maintained a balance between both by opting for night shifts while
pursuing Bachelor of commerce at Clara's College of Commerce.
After graduating Rakesh says, "With an innate passion to embark upon a new career
path in the corporate sector I have given my best efforts and bagged a job at well
known multinational banking company as an associate for bankruptcy mortgage
process". Later, he switched to Aegon Life insurance company as a relationship
manager responsible for selling insurance in the e-commerce domain where he was
awarded employee of the month for 3 successive months.
He then went on to work at LIC as a financial advisor," In this time frame my interest
in the domain of sales and finance grew drastically and decided to pursue a Masters in
Business Administration. After all the hardships, to my delight I secured a seat at IIM
R. Today, I take pride being a Kathor and am looking forward to achieving my
dreams through the journey here at IIM Rohtak", says Rakesh.

On a concluding note, he said, "The journey so far, built an urge within me to

contribute back to the society. I will take up the responsibility of educating the
underprivileged kids and provide them with appropriate guidance to the best of my
ability".
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