Konversations Cafe is going global, and our first stop is Dubai. Our final speaker in the Dubai Konversations Cafe is Amit Gupta, CoFounder of Altitude Trading and an IITIIM Alumni. A smalltown boy, who attributes his life journey to foiled plans, all the way from wanting to start his own business to IIT and IIM to Lehman to finally being unemployed. Here’s his story.

Amit Gupta was born in the smalltown of Jalandhar, where growing up he saw successful rich people exclusively as businessmen. That’s where the germ of an idea was born, that he’d one day set up a business of his own.

With no knowledge of what product or tool he’d work with, a naïve Amit decided that an import/export business would set him up for life. He learnt the challenge of the endeavor lateron.

Growing up, Amit always seemed a bright kid to his family and which he proved later, by securing admission into the premier engineering institute of the country, IIT Delhi. He fondly remembers his time and friendships from IIT Delhi, but more importantly his participation in various extracurricular activities.

He decided he won’t go down the MBA path, but life and his CGPA had other plans. Not receiving the shortlists he was hoping for, i.e. Consulting, he reluctantly sat for Job interviews and CAT. He received two job offers and a high waitlist at his only IIM Call, which was Bangalore, respectively.
He was still unsure if his IIM Bangalore waitlist would convert, and if he’d even want to go if it converted, as he had two job offers.

That’s when his seniors knocked some sense into him to not give up on the IIM Bangalore convert, and Amit obliged. Navigating through the rigorous curriculum at IIM, he converted his Summer Internship into a PPO to work with Lehman Brothers.

And as has been a pattern with Amit’s life, he was rendered unemployed during the infamous Lehman Brothers collapse of 2008 during the Global Financial Crisis. Looking back he scathed out of the debris just fine, but it was a nervewracking time for him at the time. In this conversation, he shares what happened during the bust.

Some highlights from the conversation:

A Plan is a list of things that go wrong. Keep your lists small.
The kind of opportunities that an MBA from an IIM opens up is unparalleled.
On a resume, there are very few pointers that can indicate excellence and discipline. CGPA is one of the most important.
Most fresh graduates enter the corporate on a high, undermining the operations, hierarchy and leadership of the business, which is then eventually levelled down.

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