Vishal Gajagowni’s Journey to a Parle Placement with an MBA from Parul University

Vishal Gajagowni is an MBA student at Parul University specialising in Digital Marketing and Sales, now placed at Parle with a package of 7.6 LPA. His route there was not a straight line. He finished an engineering degree in electronics and computers in Hyderabad, then took a year to travel across several states instead of looking for a job. On the last day of that journey, at Jagannath, he decided this was not the life he wanted. In his words, he had to study more.

Back home in Mahabubnagar, Telangana, he met a Parul University counsellor who had an office in his town and who explained the placements and the university. He joined, and he chose Gujarat deliberately, for its strength in management and business and for the placements. He arrived alone with three bags, which was daunting at first, but the feeling did not last.

His first-year section was an international one, with classmates from Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria and Ghana alongside students from many Indian states, around 80 to 90 in all. He says it unsettled him for about three days, and then it did not.

I am like water. I can be converted into whatever shape I want.

He credits mentors, especially a faculty member he calls Vidya Ma’am, and he makes a point that recurs in these stories: a student far from home does not have to miss home here. The MBA course also included industrial exposure, and his class visited Amul to see how its products are made, which he found useful.

The part of the university’s support he values most is the placement training, because he says it is what built his confidence. A student may already be confident, he notes, but still needs someone to push him forward.

In practical terms, the training gave him:

• The confidence to walk into a selection round and perform
• Working skills in Excel and SQL
• Interview readiness, having never sat a selection round before his MBA

His first selection round was at Ola, which he cleared on the first attempt. He puts the shift simply.

His course choice came from work he was already doing. For three to four years before the MBA he freelanced in editing, content creation and script writing, and that shaped how he read the market. Competition is stronger now, he argues, so a company has to shape how people think about a product, and the device that reaches them around the clock is the phone.

He sees digital marketing as the direction of the next decade. The first opportunities that came through the university were in fast moving consumer goods, and he took the view that FMCG is a strong place to start: the early work of meeting stores and sales contacts builds a network, and that network keeps other doors open later.

The opportunity came through a call from a faculty member he thanked as Ankit Sir, who asked whether he was genuinely interested in a core marketing role. He said yes, and the schedule was immediate: he left for Hyderabad the next day, travelling by general bus. He is clear about who carried the process. The placement team, including a coordinator he calls Karima Oja Ma’am, updated students daily and worked late into the night, and the interns on the team stayed on with them. Because he came from an engineering background he had prepared for an aptitude test, but the rounds were direct. He attended four and cleared all four. The Parle panel had five members, and he was the first to go in. The role carried a package of 7.6 LPA. He says he chose Parle partly on his father’s advice, who pointed him towards FMCG, though he adds that the panel was interested less in money and more in whether he would show up and commit.

Asked what made the difference against the other candidates, he answers in one word: storytelling. As a content creator for the university, he had learned to shape a narrative, and he points to a single story that took him 13 hours to edit.

He is candid that he did not treat the others as competitors. Of the five students who attended from the university, in his account only a couple were fully serious, and he went in first without a fixed idea of what to expect.

His guidance for students on the same course is specific and worth passing on in full:

• Start from the first year. Build your content and your skills early, because by the second year the focus narrows to placement
• It is not about CGPA or marks, it is about what you build
• Walk into the selection round believing you will clear it
• Talk to everyone. A 70-year-old and a 10-year-old both have something to teach you
• Do not fear English or skills. There is no perfect English, so speak and keep the flow, and let the university help you learn Excel and the tools you need

The most useful thing Vishal says is also the most honest, and it is his own view, not a slogan. The university gives the opportunity and puts a student in front of the panel. The result depends on the student.

That is the mindset Parul University’s management ecosystem is built to reward. The ambition he is already working on, a digital marketing agency run with his friends, is exactly the business-ready instinct the university encourages through programs and the campus entrepreneurship ecosystem. The placement is a start, not the finish line.

SOURCE AND CONTEXT. This article is based on an interview with Vishal Gajagowni, an MBA Digital Marketing and Sales student at Parul University placed at Parle. The 7.6 LPA package and selection details are as he described them. Faculty members are referred to by the names he used. His LinkedIn profile is linked with tracking parameters removed

Prospective students can explore the course and the wider management and entrepreneurship pathways at Parul University.

MBA in Digital Marketing and Sales: paruluniversity.ac.in/program/mba-digital-marketing-and-sales

Faculty of Management Studies: paruluniversity.ac.in/faculty/management-studies

MBA in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Startup Acceleration: view the programme

Startup and incubation support (PIERC): pierc.org

• Vishal Gajagowni MBA Digital Marketing and Sales student, placed at Parle
• Parul University Multidisciplinary private university, Vadodara, Gujarat
• Parle FMCG company; the employer (confirm exact entity before linking)
• Faculty of Management Studies, Parul University Runs the MBA Digital Marketing and Sales programme