Ashmita Dutta

"I'll never work in marketing." This is what I told my workaholic father working as a Marketing Manager at the time, who hadn't yet grasped the concept of a Sunday. I guess life just went, "is that so?", and here we are today.

If I were to be honest, I'd tell you that I landed up in marketing by accident. My career so far has been a series of happy (and a few not-so-happy) accidents. For reasons I am not really sure of, I decided to pursue Chartered Accountancy after graduating high school. I was fortunate enough to get trained by some of the most brilliant minds in the field for 3 years. And because the one thing I was seriously good at was putting my head down and working, I managed to graduate as a CA.

After jumping from a job in compliance, to one in investment banking, I realised that even though I could crunch numbers, finance was not my field. By then, I knew what I did not want to do. I was yet to find out what I wanted to do.

And therefrom started a series of freelance and odd projects, here and there. From content writing to sales and marketing consultancy, I did everything I could get my hands on. For a few years, I did not have a stable income, and a single sellable skill. I was still terribly unsure of what I wanted to do, and my resume did not seem to be suited to any particular job.

The one thing that I was doing quite consistently, was generating business - whether it be for myself, for my employers, or for my clients. I wasn't always doing it too well, but I was doing it all the time. I also seemed to have a lot of fun with it. Identifying the requirement of the clients, finding the business solutions, and fitting them together - to create something new and exciting, was something I started looking forward to (including the paycheck at the end of the day, of course). It was much later that I found out they had a name for this profile - business development.

By a stroke of sheer luck, and the fact that my career path had pretty much paved itself, I was hired by a branding agency. I found myself in a position where I could take my old love of words and new love of business, and combine the two to build something pride-worthy.

Now, when I look at a business, I understand its balance sheet and the financial implications of a decision, and the legal aspects of an industry. I understand the power of words for a business, and the importance of branding and social responsibility. And I know how to bring all of them together.

Hello, dots of the past that are connecting with each other quite well.