Profile: Fakhruddin Dahodwala, MBA from ISB, Co 2015
My name is Fakhruddin and I was born and brought up in Mumbai as a true Mumbaikar. I completed my Computer engineering and started my career in investment banking at JP Morgan. I worked on credit analysis and got an opportunity to be a part of the global team. I did a short stint in my family business to understand the local markets and post that joined Desta, a rural marketing startup as head of marketing. I worked with farmers and SMEs in rural areas to develop and market products to the rural population. Post my MBA from ISB, I joined Godrej as a brand manager in the corporate marketing team, leading the masterbrand for the B2B businesses of the group. Currently, I work at Directi where I have led the marketing team for their payments business, Zeta and now leading a marketing team for their adtech business, Media.net.
I am an avid trekker and biker and have been on many adventurous trips. I enjoy meditating and swimming. I am extremely interested in organic farming and aspire to get into it over the next few years.
My interview experience at ISB, Hyderabad:
The interview process at ISB is the most important step in the MBA application process. Once you have a shortlist post the essays & recommendations, the final step towards admission, personal interview, is the final deciding factor.
Instead of selecting the Mumbai location for the interview, I deliberately selected the Hyderabad campus for my in-person admissions interview. This gave me a chance to explore the campus and meet the current students and professors. Prior to the interview, I was asked to write an essay on a single word “Yellow”. This was a test to check my writing skills and ensure that my application essays were written by me. My interview panel consisted of 2 alums and 1 person from the admission committee. One of the interviewers, Ankur Warikoo was then the CEO of Groupon India and was extremely polite and played the role of the good guy. However, the other alum was unfriendly and played the role of devil’s advocate by countering and questioning me at every step. I was grilled on my essays and my long term goals after my MBA and whether I had tried achieving them without an MBA. My answers to all their questions were well researched and tested. I explained to them that why trying out different functions and industries such as Investment banking and agricultural marketing before MBA gave me complete clarity on my interests and career goals. I discussed how I was very confident about what I wanted to do at ISB and how the school was a perfect fit for me. The interviewers were impressed by my honesty and preparedness and I was admitted to ISB.
A calm & confident mindset and a lot of mock interview practice helped me crack the ISB MBA interview with ease.