The turning point in Ankur Khantwal’s outlook came when he was faced with a seemingly insurmountable backlog in his first semester. He turned that defeat into success through sheer determination and hard work, and then there was no looking back...
Ankur Khantwal (left) with his friend
Naughty like any other child but within limits, he was also a child of integrity who took full responsibility for his actions. He imbibed moral values from his parents and the society, so he always knew his limits. Ankur Khantwal, who passed out from a well-known college in the city, takes us through his journey of professional education and also the way he overcame the most testing time during his campus placement. Today he is well placed in Mother Dairy, thanks to his work experience with Tech Mahindra. With the able guidance of his seniors at Mother Dairy, Ankur looks to scale new heights.
Ankur comes from Paonta Sahib, a major industrial town of Himachal Pradesh. His father, B. D. Khantwal is a retired government official while his mother, Anita Khantwal is a house -wife and his brother, Anurag, is a software developer at Syntel. He did his schooling at Paonta Sahib and went on to complete his graduation in engineering from the Dehradun Institute of Technology. The place being known for football, Ankur too played this beautiful game during his school and college days. He was a good athlete too, taking part in different events in college and has a bronze medal as well.
Ankur wanted to join the Indian Air Force and serve the country, but that didn’t happen, which made him believe that it was destiny and not the dream that one should pursue. “I never thought that one day I would walk into Mother Dairy, but it has happened. All I want is to make the most of it. This is just the beginning, and I have a long way to go.”
For Ankur, failures have turned into blessings. “Failures are blessings, as they give you a chance to do the same thing again in a better way, though you have tasted defeat. Never take defeat as your loss, but as a challenge to do better,” he says.
For him, the real test of mettle came when he had to grapple with eight backlogs in his first semester. “It was a shock, as I had failed in eight subjects. This happened since I had been too carefree during my first year. But I said to myself, ‘I have to’, and with a positive attitude, keeping my goal before me, I put a stop to all entertainment and outings I had indulged in in the first semester, and came out with flying colours, clearing all the eight backlogs. This was when I felt that nothing was impossible if one wanted to achieve the goal,” says Ankur.
Talking about his school and graduation days, Ankur did have his godmother in Shivani Pandey, a teacher in his school. He was her blueeyed boy. “She was much more than a teacher, a friend and a philosopher. She was our inspiration and guided and moulded each and every student without any discrimination, no matter how the student was,” said Ankur, about his favourite teacher. “It was just not about books. She taught us about the social responsibility we should have towards society.”
Although college life was a mix of both excitement and challenges, campus placement proved to be a testing time for Ankur. He terms the aptitude test during the Mother Dairy campus placement as ‘the mother of all tests’. “I would call it the devil’s circuit day; it was one of the toughest aptitude tests for a placement process. All the rest that followed was just a formality. During the group discussion on ‘Do you think advertising is a wastage of resource’, I shared my point of view as to how a customer perceives it when a company starts advertising more and when it does less, followed by what iPhone used to do, and what they are doing now and also how advertising can change the marketing scenario altogether. In the final interview round too they asked me the tricky question, ‘What is failure for you?’” At the end of it all, Ankur had shed all fear, and he went through all the processes with confidence. “Never fear, stand up and march ahead the right way, and the goal will be reached,” says Ankur, as a piece of advice for his juniors, as campus placement is believed to be one of the most fearful processes for any student. “Set aside fear and the rest will fall in place. This is the first step towards making headway towards a career, and it is just another learning phase for anyone. Life is a learning process and with each step you take you keep on learning and improving,” says god-fearing Ankur, who believes, “All the credit of my success goes to Lord Shiva.”
‘Set aside fear and the rest will fall in place. This is the first step towards making a career, and it is just another learning phase for anyone. Life is a learning process and with each step you take you keep on learning and improving’
“My happiest moment was when I cleared the exams (interview) of Tech Mahindra and got to work with the training team there,” says Ankur, for whom life is all about learning and improving to become a better human being.
By Joe Williams
