Vivek Parmar, MBA Class of 2013, in an interview filmed during the Inside MBA open day on 10 June 2017
Prior to taking his MBA at the Asian Institute of Management, Vivek Parmar was a mechanical engineer in the power sector in India working on one thing: power plant designs.
Vivek’s MBA journey began with a question raised by a friend. Said Vivek, “One fine day, a friend asked me, ‘How much will it cost me to put up a 600-megawatt power plant?
The question stopped Vivek dead in his tracks. He realized he did not know the answer. He knew how much it would cost to set up the piping of the entire power plant, but had no idea how much the entire project would cost.
That got Vivek thinking about the bigger picture. For instance, what key decisions would investors face before making the call on whether to put up the money or not. “That motivated me to come to AIM, take up my MBA, and grow,” Vivek said.
Asked about his proudest moment, Vivek replied it happened during his on-job training at an oil company in the Philippines. He was working with the company’s sales team and was asked to design a system to help track KPIs ― how many accounts they were converting, which sales were ongoing ― so someone in the central office could monitor who was doing what job and how well.
Vivek recalled, “I came up with an Excel best tool for the whole monitoring process, where the head of sales would get a weekly report. And when I presented it to management with all the decision parameters and everything, the vice president of sales said, ‘Well! We paid a consultant around six million pesos to do the same thing. And you did it in a week’s time.’ That was a real proud feeling.”
On how his MBA from AIM transformed his life, Vivek said, “I am no longer a nine-to-six employee. I’m more of a person who strives everyday to bring change to the workplace, in my personal life, in the lives of friends and colleagues. It is a result of my AIM training.”
Vivek Parmar belongs to the AIM MBA Class of 2013. He has worked in solar, coal, and combined cycle power generation projects. Vivek stepped into his role as AVP for Project Development at Meralco PowerGen Corporation at the beginning of 2017.