LIFE AFTER BITSoM
We often imagine education as the accumulation of knowledge. My experience at BITSoM was almost the opposite – it was the gradual unlearning of certainty. I walked into campus believing I knew marketing reasonably well, having read literature and practiced it for a few years. I walked out appreciating how little I knew. That realization wasn’t intimidating; it was liberating. It made curiosity a discipline rather than a personality trait.
Looking back, my strongest memories aren’t of deadlines or grades, but of classrooms that spilled into corridors, debates that continued over coffee, and professors and peers who made every assumption worth interrogating. Among them, Professor Nirmalya Kumar left an indelible mark. In his Advanced Marketing Strategy course, he spoke about private labels—not merely as a retail construct, but as a lens to create differentiation and absolute value. At the time, it felt like an elegant idea from a world far removed from the one I expected to work in. Years later, that idea quietly resurfaced.
At Amrut Distilleries, while conceptualizing Zarf, India’s first single malt private label for an award-winning restaurant, the echoes of those classroom discussions became impossible to ignore. The ideas had lingered long after graduation, quietly finding their place in the decisions that brought a theoretical concept to life. The opportunity to create a distinctive private-label experience wasn’t just a business decision, it was a moment where a classroom insight found its commercial expression. Few experiences are as satisfying as watching an idea travel that full distance, from a professor’s lecture to something customers eventually experience. If there is one thing BITSoM gave me, it wasn’t a toolkit of answers. It was the confidence to ask better questions, to remain intellectually restless, and to believe that the value of a great classroom is often realized years later, when you least expect it. That, to me, is the quiet legacy of my time at BITSoM.
