Life after the Fellowship: Lakshman Rohith Maradapa

July 2018: Have you ever wanted to learn and do a 100 different things, all at once? Have you been intrigued by everything from the mundane to the abstract?  If yes, I’ve been one of those, like you, who ended up at the Fellowship. For me everything I’ve done has always been about people, and for the first time in my life I felt I was amidst the right ones.

I felt YIF would quench that thirst for knowledge, but on the contrary, it made me more ravenous and confused. Amidst all the activities and experiences, YIF got me confused and interested in more things than I’d already allowed myself to be, but before I knew it, through Ashoka, I found my dream job, in exactly the field I wanted, Business and Finance.

It was a role at Lumis Partners, a US-India PE Fund that partners with fabulous leaders to build awesome businesses. There I worked with vibrant leaders like Rohit Bhayana (CEO of General Electric’s Software’s at just 33!) and Ashutosh Mayank. At Lumis, I got to work on diverse verticals such as AI-ML, Supply Chain Logistics, IoT and Healthcare.

(Rohith Maradapa with his colleagues at Lumis Partners)

We even launched an ELM on AI-ML research, and as Point of Contact, I got to team up with some fabulous 2018 YIFs’ – Ram, Rahul and Vishal! For most part, work was good. In fact I remember asking a colleague (Akhil Vohra – UG founding batch) “Bro, I’m not sure If we’re working or whiling away time.” It was that engaging!

As I was getting acclimatized to the work and settling into the Lumis machinery, I received a call to join the National Rowing Camp for the Asian Games based on my 2015 Silver Medal performance at the Senior Asian Rowing Championships at Beijing. What would I say? Well it was a tough call, Dream Job or opportunity to win a Medal for the Country? I chose the latter, answering the Call of Duty in the affirmative.

I was going to be leaving spreadsheets and numbers for a while. I moved from Gurgaon to Pune, where I’ve been the last 7 odd months, training at the serene Army Rowing Node, CME, Pune.Here, I’ve had the opportunity to train under the internationally renowned Nicolae Gioga from Romania. Alongside training, I’ve had the task of helping him coach our athletes, computing timings, extrapolating individual athlete performance from team events and more. So I’ve been as attached to spreadsheets as before!

Also, I’m happy to share that I’ve been selected for the final team to represent India. (Due to the selection, I’ve had to ask the editor an extension, YIF style, and she relented!-Thanks Milloni!) Alongside, I’ve also been elected as India’s Ambassador (YCM) to the Youth Olympic Games in BA, Argentina this October. As part of this engagement I’ve gotten to interact with Youth Ambassadors from around the world and with youth athletes from across India. In collaboration with the IOA we plan to launch some workshops for economically backward youth that foster the Olympic spirit of Collaboration and Equality across India. You will hear more on this soon.

Lastly be it helping me find my dream job, to helping me a commerce graduate, deal with Physics equations solving for Boat dynamics or to design workshops for youth, Ashoka-YIF has given me the gusto to take on any problem with a solution-mindset and has taught me that collaboration with the right people can solve even the most complex problems!

Back to training now, See you soon!