Ayashika Mukherjee

I started attending dance school when I was 3 and a few years later, I started taking swimming lessons as well. As time passed, managing both swimming and dancing, along with studies became difficult, so I had to quit dancing school. That was a tough decision to take, but with time, I fell in love with swimming. Other than the 2 hours practice that we did in the classes, I used to swim in ponds with wild fishes and snakes. All these swimming exercises helped me win multiple state level and national level contests during the school days.

With all these medals and certificates in swimming, I was confident that I would be getting a good scholarship in the colleges that I wanted, but that’s not what happened. I got into SRM Chennai, and started my graduation in Aerospace engineering after high school. A lot of people including some of my relatives started asking questions to my parents, Why Aerospace Engineering? Why is Ayashika doing this, and that too from SRM? Isn’t it expensive? Why are you investing so much in your daughter? My parents have always been very supportive of me, and my dreams, one of which was to be an Aerospace Engineer. In the final year of graduation, me and my team were selected for an Internship in National Formosa University College, Taiwan after we made ‘The Octavian’, an Octocopter UAV prototype.

The internship in Taiwan at the initial stages was very challenging. Challenging in terms of communication and food, but those days gave me a glimpse of how it is like to be independent. It was an eye opening experience. The Ministry of Education in Taiwan held a cultural program during Diwali and I was asked to perform there. The people in Taiwan really loved my freestyle dance, showered me with so many compliments, and on top of that they approved my scholarship for Post-Graduation in Taiwan. The experience of dancing in front of 200+ people, that too in a foreign nation really inspired me and made me believe in my talent of dance that I quit during my teens. I had to refuse the scholarship offered to me as I had some other plans. After coming back to India, I started applying for jobs everywhere, and I finally got a job in a startup. Surprisingly, even though I was an engineering graduate, they offered me a role of HR. During the 1.2 years I spent there, I got on-field training on management even though I had no prior management experience. That not only taught me about professionalism, but also the fact that managing a company is not a joke. Just like every good thing comes to an end, in June 2020, I got a better opportunity to work for a big MNC, so  I decided to switch.

I was hired by Accenture, where at present I am working as an HR associate.  I left dancing for swimming, but I guess dancing never left me. This lockdown has given me an opportunity to rekindle my lost passion for dance. I am not only trying to learn more dancing styles, but also teaching it to the kids of our domestic helps which includes maid, gardener, etc. This is just a small initiative, which I think I would like to turn into an institute or something like that in the future.

Total Work Experience : 1.6 Years (Accenture, Uni Mech Aerospace and Manufacturing)