Parul University Maverick: How Kanishka Tareta Switched From HR to Business Analytics and Impressed a Jury of EY, Hexaware & Mastercard!

Some achievements arrive in a single dramatic moment. Kanishka Tareta’s did not. At Parul University, hers was built slowly, across a specialisation she chose to leave behind, an internship where she built a reporting system from nothing, and a demanding Maverick selection process that ran, by her own account, well past its scheduled hours more days than not.

Maverick is not just a title for me. It had so many practices and so many months of training and preparation behind it. It was something I contributed to over a long period of time.
– Kanishka Tareta, Parul University

Kanishka completed her BBA at LNCT Group of Colleges, Bhopal, specialising in Human Resource Management, a background that, on paper, has little to do with SQL queries, hypothesis testing, or dashboards. The most consequential decision of her MBA came before she entered a single analytics class: to leave HR and switch into Business Analytics, a field she had never formally studied. “Parul University made me realise, or gave me exposure to, a different sort of specialisation,” she explains, noting that her undergraduate college did not even offer analytics. That range of exposure, she says, is what made a new path visible.

What settled her adjustment to a new city and campus was the teaching at Parul University. She points to Dr. Bharat Bharvad, a professor of business management, as the person who first convinced her the university meant what it said. “He didn’t just teach from the PPT,” she recalls. “He called students out of their comfort zone, asked us to give presentations, and gave us case studies. That’s where I saw that this college is not just doing something for formality. They are actually putting in effort to make students grow.” She also credits a first-semester communication-and-leadership subject whose value she only fully appreciated later, when the interviews began.

The internship that anchors much of her portfolio was her Summer Internship Program at Srivika Talent Solutions. In this recruitment start-up, she worked as an HR and business analyst intern. Because the young company had no management information system (MIS), she built one herself. “I created their MIS, I fed the data, did the data analysis, and calculated the insights I shared with the founder,” she says. Rather than stepping into an existing analytics function, she built the reporting infrastructure from a blank slate, a level of ownership unusual for a summer intern, and one that would return, reworked, at the center of her Maverick presentation.

For a student whose academic identity had been built around HR, the Impact Training Program that Parul University’s placement ecosystem runs was a genuine leap into the unknown, and she met it with enthusiasm. “The training covered Excel, SQL, Python, and Power BI, all the skills useful for business analytics,” she says. “I was so excited and grateful for the opportunity.” She credits two mentors by name: Richa Dubey, her internship mentor, and Komal ma’am, one of her impact trainers.

The road to the Maverick tag was not one evaluation but a sequence, each narrowing the field. It began with an interview with the trainer, who shortlisted candidates for a technical round (Excel, SQL, Python, and logical reasoning). That led to a broader panel round assessing technical knowledge, subject knowledge, and communication. Clearing it earned her a place in the Maverick training itself, a dense, roughly ten-day block she describes as exhausting in the most literal sense. “Sessions were meant to finish by 4 PM but usually ran to 6,” she recalls. “There were days I stayed in college for nine or ten hours. That training paid off, but it was exhausting.”

The process culminated in a case-study presentation before a panel of external industry representatives, including those from EY, Hexaware, and Mastercard. Kanishka returned to the research paper from her Srivika internship and rebuilt it for the jury, condensing a full research paper into four slides, adding a dashboard, and writing new SQL queries specifically for the panel. The questions probed her reasoning: the tools she used, how she formed her hypothesis, why she chose her method, and what she would recommend from the data. She is candid that one question, about why the number of applications changed month to month, made her pause and gather herself before answering. She presented sixth, and the feedback stayed with her.

Kanishka, you are the first participant who has truly impressed us.
– The jury’s feedback, as Kanishka recalls it

The formal result came only around 10 PM, after hours she describes as suspenseful and stressful in equal measure.

Of the more than 1,700 students in her MBA batch, only 22 earned the Maverick tag. Asked what separated those 22 from everyone else who wanted it, her answer returns, as it does throughout, to initiative rather than talent.

A lot of people think they are capable of the title, but they don’t work on it, they don’t take initiative. That is what sets us apart: the willingness to go beyond our comfort zone, learn more, and become something better.
– Kanishka Tareta

The Maverick tag has already begun to reshape her opportunities: companies connected to the jury process can refer selected Mavericks directly. Asked where she is heading, Kanishka draws on the dual background that got her here. She wants to move into a business analyst role but has not ruled out leadership positions closer to her HR roots either, describing the two paths as complementary rather than competing.

Everybody wants an over-the-moon placement; everybody wants to be a Maverick. But don’t just dream about it; do something about it. Go out of your comfort zone and take initiative.
– Kanishka Tareta, Parul University

Her own path proves the point: a specialisation switched mid-course, an internship where she built something that had not existed before, and a training block that regularly ran past schedule. Taken together, they are the record of a Parul University student who, faced with a title only 22 of 1,700 would earn, decided the only response worth having was to try harder, and kept trying until an industry jury told her she was the first to truly impress them. If you’re passionate about HR or how the global market works, discover Parul University’s MBA programs and get to work for globally revered companies!