I tried a few paths before I found the one: marketing.

I loved studying a lot of subjects varying from History to Maths. My coaching class was full of brilliant people, and somewhere in 10th grade I realised I didn't want to compete with them. I wanted to be their manager one day. I didn't fully know what that meant yet. I just knew I wanted to be the one bringing people together to build something meaningful.

The exams went well. I became an NTSE and KVPY scholar (KVPY AIR 314), and ranked AIR 413 in JEE Main (Delhi Female Rank 1) and AIR 2078 in JEE Advanced. While growing up, I used to ask a lot of quetions while growing up

I studied Computer Science at IIT (BHU) Varanasi. Part of me knew I wanted a people-centric role.

A data analyst internship at MAQ Software made it clearer. I liked working with data, but I didn't want to sit behind the screen all day. I wanted to be in the room where people decide who to sell to, why, and how.

So I tried everything I could reach. I took part in entrepreneurship events, represented the college in badminton, and grew a college's committee's Instagram account from zero to 5k. I took business management electives, and online courses in psychology, product management and consumer behaviour.

I eventually applied for an MBA to give myself a proper start in the field.

At XLRI Jamshedpur I filled my second year with marketing courses, from marketing research to digital marketing. I topped several of them, and scored the highest in my batch in Digital Marketing. I've forgotten a fair few textbook definitions since. I haven't forgotten how much I enjoyed learning them.

It wasn't all smooth. I was one of two students in my batch whose summer internship was revoked. That phase was hard, but I didn't give up on myself. I found an internship on my own, in a founder's office role at MarianaAI. I spoke with customers (physicians in the US), worked in different verticals like sales, marketing, customer success. Working that closely with the founders gave me a broader understanding of how a business work.

Then, I worked on few more AI projects at Yaska Learning. I built GenAI tools, including a RAG-based chatbot and an AI exam-evaluation tool.

I also took running seriously, representing XLRI in both years and winning medals in the 800m and 5km.

I joined Haleon (formerly GSK Consumer Healthcare) as a Management Trainee in Sales & Marketing, and spent most of the year on the ground, across 40+ cities and towns. My favourite part was the people.

For eight months I was in sales: General Trade in Telangana, then Modern Trade in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. I worked alongside field sales teams across the country, whether or not I spoke their language (Google Translate filled the gaps), and pitched in wherever I could help. I learned how FMCG sales really work, from managing distributors to fighting for one more shelf in a modern trade store, and finished at 117% of my sales target for a new superstockist I helped onboard. This is also where I learned to use pivot tables and XLOOKUPs properly: not as Excel tricks, but to answer real business questions.

Then I moved to Sensodyne's rural activation, a BTL programme run with two agencies, which taught me a lot about collaboration. I visited rural markets in Bihar and Tamil Nadu, and got insights from the field for the brand team: a combined toothbrush-and-toothpaste kit, and an SKU-wise focus that lifted the team's sales nearly 1.5x. I designed the kit's artwork with an artwork agency and saw it through to print. It was the first India-specific artwork for a Sensodyne toothbrush.

I also worked on the go-to-market plan for a new Centrum multivitamin.

Eight months of hotel rooms and meals ordered in were what the job needed, but my physical health paid for it. In January I found an online coach and started rebuilding, slowly and steadily.

I want work I can go deep into, doing what I love, while also looking after myself. The path ahead at Haleon meant three to four more years mostly on the ground. It's a valuable path, but not one my health could sustain. So I took a break to recover properly, and I've lost 10 kg along the way.

The break also gave me time to think properly about what came next. I looked at data science. I considered a PhD. I spent two months at a market research firm, learning how panel research works and how findings are extrapolated to a whole industry. It was interesting, but I wanted to be closer to the marketing decisions themselves: the planning, and seeing my ideas executed, ideally with D2C brands one day.

Every path led me back to the same place. The dashboards, the club Instagram, my marketing courses, the rural markets and the artwork, even growing my own Instagram channel: all of it pointed to digital marketing. So that's where I'm going deeper.

My technical background helps. I'm comfortable with code and AI tools, and I built this website myself with Astro, using Claude as my coding partner. I'm learning the foundations first: SEO (the organic side), then tracking and analytics with Google Tag Manager and GA4, then paid campaigns. This site is my practice ground. I'll be writing practical marketing and sales content for fresh MBA graduates here, and I'll start applying for roles in the coming months.