When serendipity helps build a strong career

A university course, taught by C.K. Prahalad, influenced Lok Capital's Vishal Mehta to switch from a telecom job to the social sector

- Mahesh Joshi

Serendipity played a major role in Vishal Mehta's life. In 1999, after having worked for four years in the telecom sector in India, he decided to do an MBA from Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in the United States. When he began studying for his degree, he had a clear vision: to either make a professional shift into the consultancy space or continue in the telecom sector.

This was the time that India's privatization story had just about started, and many new private ventures were being set up across sectors including financial services, telecom, education and healthcare. Up until that time, most of these services and their delivery was dominated by government run and controlled institutions. Vishal's job in the telecom space in India was a direct result of this privatization story where he also very quickly realized that most of these new ventures were being set up for the higher income segment in India and for the masses the life wasn't really changing much.

This realization of non-inclusive growth that he was witnessing was buried somewhere down in his priorities and did not get exposed until he got to University of Michigan.

But when he began his studies at the University of Michigan, he took a course that would, quite literally, change his life. The course was taught by C.K. Prahalad, then one of the world's most visionary management thinkers. Prahalad had been teaching at Michigan Ross since 1981, but his influence grew in 2004 when he co-authored a book, titled The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. The book galvanized how multinational corporations (MNCs) across the world looked at dealing with the poorest consumers.