Naman Kumar: From Tackling Pirates on the High Seas to an MBA in Dublin

Naman Kumar always knew that he wanted to have an international career. After graduating from university, he found himself working as an engineer for A.P Moller - Maersk, living and working on some of the largest ships in the world and managing teams of crew from all across the globe. After sailing around the world, fighting off pirate attacks, and thriving in an intense and challenging environment, Naman decided to take the next step in his career and enrol in the full time MBA program at UCD Smurfit in Ireland. He joins us today to talk about his experience with the course, transitioning from engineering to business, and career options for MBAs in Ireland.

Many students come to an MBA from banking, consulting, or MNC backgrounds, but what about those that don’t? The Modern MBA podcast with Marie Kirwan and Kristen Rossi shares the stories of those transitioning from or using their MBAs in unorthodox MBA sectors including the arts, healthcare, not-for-profit, academia, and more.

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Podcast Music Credit:
Limit 70, courtesy of Kevin Macleod

Transcript

The Modern MBA
Welcome to the Modern MBA podcast with Marie Kirwan and Kristen Rossi. Our mission is to help MBAs coming from going into or merely considering more unorthodox career paths. We're a community to find inspiration and share stories. Today we're speaking with Naman Kumar, who after a career thwarting pirates as a marine engineer with Maersk is now doing his MBA at Smurfit Business School in Dublin.

Naman
My name is Naman Kumar, and I hail and I come from the beautiful city of Lucknow India. It's about 500 kilometres from the capital, New Delhi. And quite a history happening in there. And now country I'm based in Dublin, and I'm starting the MBA at UCD. Michael Smurfit graduate Business School

The Modern MBA 
Would you kindly walk us through your career to date?

Naman  1:04  
Thank you. So I have been the type of kid who would, you know, think of a toys and split them apart? And absolutely the kind of kid who paints would absolutely hate. So I was very curious. I love travelling. And while I was just growing up, I had to look for a career option, which will pass on the baton baton, right. So I started digging in. And I just needed to know about the career option of Merchant Navy, and Marines going out to sea and doing all the exciting stuff. So for that I needed a degree in Marine Engineering and I was very fortunate to have been accepted in the BITS Pilani programme of Marine Engineering, which Pilani by the way, is one of the world's most exclusive universities and in post acceptance of just 1.47%. So in the very secondary of the undergraduate programme in Marine Engineering, I was selected by most line which is the world's biggest shipping company. So once I was done with my under graduation, I started sailing on most line vessels, which are these big huge vessels that you see out of the ocean. So I started sailing the ships in 2016. And just to give you a sense of how
extremely global and diverse and our professional was my first ship that I joined, I joined it from Oman. The ship was Danish built, and it was running under the flag of Korea. It was headed by a Polish captain. My boss was Ukrainian. The entire crew was Filipino, and our destination was Africa. So I was I was extremely amazed at the kind of diversity I was in.
And once I started sailing, the very first ship I was among people from various cultures, various nationalities, a very new experience to me, you know, and just two months later, after I joined, the vessel was just cruising to Africa. As I mentioned, our destination was Africa, city in Kenya, we passing by the Somalian waters, and we had a pilot track. So a guy who has just joined has just started his career. He had so much to take in within those two months, it was just very exciting. So this entire incident, the pirate incident, we I just quickly walk you through that. It was just it was a skiff, which had armed pirates, the ones that you've seen, we use with ak 47, and all the fancy weapons. So even though we had armed guards, and we had all the protection in the vessel, it was quite adventurous and thrilling to get out of that zones or entire crisis management staff came to action. We had to do all the emergency stuff. And we were very, very fortunate that we could just get through that situation. Mark life at sea demanded me to just demanded basically all the Mariners in the community just go through that exercise over and over because we couldn't just change the route, right, we sign up for it. Our job was to deliver the cargo to our customers as fast as possible. So as and when I say in more and more shapes, these experiences only got five. Just last week under the MBA programme. We have a module which is titled leadership and Organisational Behaviour. Now just giving a presentation on team dynamics and as telling them about us telling my cohort about the story of my leadership, the leadership that I did before joining them your programme, when our vessel was stuck in thick ice in Canada in m plus or minus 35 degrees. And we had to roll out an SOS call the Canadian Navy came to rescue us. So this entire experience at sea it I mean as fascinating and exciting as it sounds. It did teach me a lot. And it was very exciting to teach me soft skills like adaptability, resilience, problem solving. So I'm really glad to have that experience and absolutely, it's quite exciting, but it really the core soft skills I feel like it must have given you are really transferable to the MBA that teamwork, communication, you know, really quite quick problem solving skills. 

They're really useful and transferable? Yeah, definitely. I completely agree. Because, as I mentioned, right, the very first ship that I joined, the entire setting was so diverse. It was so global. I was in this entire time that I've been sailing, I have over 35 plus nationalities if I remember well. So this entire setting, I don't think any other profession in such a short span of time could have given me that opportunity. So really fortunate for that experience. Yeah, it's really brilliant. So then it brings us to the next question of what made you decide to pursue an MBA, I was quite inclined to business since the very start, because I call it the giving of my father who was very much inclined in the markets. And also I used to see him, there was this bug within me. And I used to spend a lot of my off time reading about business startups and everything. So I use this opportunity that I got through the Merchant Marines while I was travelling to these countries to go and network with my aluminized from the undergrad programme, that was BITS Pilani, my university, and I reached out to them on various docks that I reached, and I dropped in during time in the Merchant Marines. So if suppose I'm I fanzines remember we were in Montreal, Canada, and I connected with an alumni she was studying in McGill, and she was pursuing an MBA there in the sort of School of Management, which is the business school in macdill. That's fortunate enough to go visit that school and see the infrastructure, see how the lectures are being done. So all of these experiences, some of them included going out to business schools, the others included reaching out to people who are working in the industry, I could see the work that they were doing, they were working on something very exciting. So all of these factors combined, I really started thinking and I thought MBA is the next big step, which can really open new avenues for me. 

The Modern MBA
So you started your MBA in August, what has been the experience been like so far?

Naman 7:26  
In one word, it has been crazy. I mean, my class is extremely diverse.
In the class, we have a tech startup CEO, an urban planner, a journalist, and a trained commercial pilot, we are all sharing the same deck, working on extremely diverse projects with membean and collaborating with each other, you know, so once when I joined the programme, I was quite sceptical that how I'd fit in given my very non traditional background, but I was amazed that the programme has been designed to bring in people from various backgrounds of all who who just get to the table, the different work experiences, perspectives on things. 

The Modern MBA
We've talked a little bit about your MBA experience and what it's been like so far. And given the background that you've come from, and which parts of the course are you finding the most challenging or the most rewarding?

Naman 8:18  
Thank you, Marie, for that question. That's quite an interesting question. I think,
apart from the fact that the MBA programme, because it's a one year programme at Moffitt, it is designed to be fast paced, it is definitely it takes a toll on you. And when you progress through the course, the biggest challenge that I'm facing is, and it's not just me who's facing that is known for the as funny as it sounds. I come from a background where in my job was quite rough and tough. And we were needed to be hands on hands on deck. It was just you were out there, you were dynamic all the time. And now most of my time is in front of a desktop or a workstation. When I'm standing in the camera, working with teams collaborating on projects and attending those lectures online. It's after the point it starts to kind of build up and it gives you advice that okay, you need to keep the screen and keep his eyes off the screen. Right. I think the most rewarding thing out of my experience in the MBA programme is
this experience that I've brought of collaborating with multinationals within the Merchant Marines. As I mentioned, I have collaborated with over 35 plus nationalities, nationalities during that annual so this this entire setting really taught me to push my boundaries and gel up with people especially quickly. It wasn't as quick that I expected it in. It turned out to be in the MBA programme. But yeah, I was amazed that I could just gel up with people I could push through, I could talk to them, understand them better and just work with them on teams to you know, just achieve a common goal. 

The Modern MBA
So moving on from the MBA experience, what's next for you? And what are you planning to do after your course?

Naman 10:09  
So while I was just charting my journey and reverse mapping of where do I want to go, and while I was looking at the options that I can first you, while I was reaching out to alumni in these various different parts of the globe, I realised that a good fit for me would be operation space and preferably within retail logistics or supply chain. And because I bring that wealth of experience within behind me, for logistics and supply chain, I feel I can directly overlap that, coupled with whatever I learned in the MBA programme. So I'm looking at roles within the logistics or supply chain space in the operations industry. I am also keen on programme management roles within supply chain sector. And as you know that Dublin has a presence of top IP companies and tech companies, right, though, nine out of 10 companies based in Dublin and Dublin is a the hotbed for tech and innovation. So all of these companies have various programme management roles within logistics and supply chain offer, especially given the times that we are rolling in the COVID times they have they need people who can completely revamp their entire supply chains and not have the reliance on just one country as we had seen in the previous years. Finally, I think a longshot would be strategy and operations consulting. Because I feel that is one role where and I could pursue that thing of that knack for solving problems, which I used to do on board on a daily basis. 

The Modern MBA
You chose to study in Dublin, why why Dublin of all places? Is it because of it's a great hub for all these companies or Mm hmm. 

Naman
So while I was shortlisting the MBA programmes and looking at all the top B schools, I had some clear filter so I wanted a one year programme, a one year MBA programme because I wanted to transition back to the MBA market soon. I was also keen on places which are featured within which had, which were featured within economist and Financial Times and UCD Michael Smurfit graduate Business School has been consistently rated for for the last 14 years within the top 100 b schools globally. And it's the best B school in Ireland, as also keen on studying the NBA in the capital city of a country because I firmly believe that whatever you are learning if you're close to the industry, and you can convey what you have learned to the industry, if you are within that reach and within that reach of a stone's throw distance, it becomes easier to transition back to the professional journey and connect with people all through this way. So this entire fact that Michael Smurfit business school was located in Dublin, which has the presence of these top IP companies, the industry is just about six kilometres away from the place that the campus is located. And the school has such a vast presence of aluminized spread across the country, which is small in comparison to other companies. So that really made it quite interesting. And the fact and coupled with the fact that I got a good scholarship from the school and so it was an obvious choice for my next step in the career. 

The Modern MBA 
So my final question is, what tips would you give to people coming from a similar background to yourself who were thinking of doing an MBA?

Naman
 I could not have imagined that I'd come to a place when I'd be giving advice to people of similar backgrounds. But okay, that's an interesting question. I'd say when I look back at my journey, right, and I, when I look back on the interactions that I have with my juniors or peers, back from the undergrad programme, or people in the industry, I feel a lot of people in this industry are very, very curious to just make the move because life at sea takes a toll. So I'd say a decision such as this is a big decision because you can't go back and reverse it right after undergrad for undergrad programme, you still have a choice, you can make a move in the Masters, but this is the final step. So I'd say this needs a conscious thought. And take it easy. Reach out to people on LinkedIn, reverse map yogen. Think of what you would rarely want to do. Look for people who are doing the exact same thing that you want or aspire to do. And then see how they got there. It's very important this step. A lot of people in this industry ignore the step and these are jump onto the process. They enrol into programmes and then look out for options of what they can do. So give it a serious thought. Talk to people, and I'm more than happy to help you. You can reach out to me I'll be more than happy to talk to you about  the  mistakes that I made, and the key learnings that I have got from this entire journey from the highest, he's coming to one of the best universities in Ireland and studying them.

The Modern MBA 15:13  
Thank you, Naman. 
That's all for today's modern MBA podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Marie. If you like this episode, remember to hit the subscribe button on Apple podcasts. You can get access to articles and more great content by visiting our website The Modern mba.co.uk, Facebook and LinkedIn under The Modern MBA and on Twitter at MBA modern. Until next time, bye bye