Management as a career option in the post-coronavirus era

‘Tough times do not last, but tough people do’

India, like many other nations of the world, is faced with the tough choice of saving lives and containing the economic damage in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic and the consequent lockdown of the country for over a month.

While India is one of the few countries that have handled the crisis well, the volatile geopolitical situation is in fact once in a lifetime opportunity for India, which should not be squandered away. The current crisis could be turned into a window of opportunity to revamp and rebuild existing archaic structures that may not be conducive to young India’s 21^st Century aspirations.

Essential sectors such as food, agriculture, transport infrastructure and healthcare are default areas of focus for the Government at the Centre at least over the next decade. Other than these what are the other growth avenues available? What are the sectors offering career opportunities to the young professional manager in the near term based on a scenario building exercise, a well-known management technique?

Why a business degree now?

For 2020-21, International Monetary Fund projects sizable reshaped recoveries, close to nine per cent points for the global GDP. India is expected to post a sharp turnaround and resume its pre-Covid, pre-slowdown trajectory by growing at 7.4% in 2020-21, says RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das. As the country takes steps to rebuild its economy, young graduates would do well to upskill and upgrade their qualifications with an attractive MBA. Youth coming out of schools can look forward to professional qualifications such as BBA or BCom (Hons) or an Integrated MBA, which is available in a few institutions.

“I can think. I can wait. I can fast” said Siddhartha, later on, to become Gautama Buddha. Youth would do well to pause, take a break and enroll in a suitable management programme to get superior training and skills, as the country rebuilds itself post Corona, and new job opportunities open up.

Which Sectors would beckon the management graduate?

• Manufacturing

India’s manufacturing growth has slowed down to a four-month low due to prolonged lockdown. From this, manufacturing activities have to pick up, by attracting investors away from China to set up shop here. Japan is one country planning to shift manufacturing away from China to Japan or elsewhere in the world. USA is another nation that may ask its tech companies to shift their base. Many other global manufacturing firms plan to shift part of their supply chains from China to India, as they diversify their supply chains, post Covid-19 outbreak.

India is viewed as a source of automobile components and electronic products. Japanese and South Korean firms are interested to develop supply chains from India. If we play our cards right, we could double our exports of electronic products from the current level of $9 billion per year. Besides, there is a healthy domestic market of $120 billion. Many Indian firms also which were sourcing fuel injection systems for the latest engines, besides other electronic parts from China would be localising production of these parts, following Make in India initiatives.

Managerial career paths would open up in Operations Management, Procurement, and Supply Chain Management.

• Pharmaceuticals

The Indian pharmaceutical industry is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 22.4 per cent to touch $55 billion by 2020 and exports to reach $20 billion in 2020. The share of generic, Over the Counter (OTC) and patented drugs in the Indian Pharma market is 70, 21, and 9 per cent, respectively. We will become the top exporter of medicines in categories such as BCG vaccines, anti-malarial drugs, Hydroxy Chloroquinine, etc. Management graduates would find opportunities in exports and global marketing.

• Tourism

Travel and tourism is one of the largest industries in India, with a total contribution of $240 billion to the country’s economy or 9.2 per cent of the GDP in 2018 and supported 42.673 million jobs, 8.1 per cent of its total employment. This is expected to reach over $500 billion by 2029. Despite the ailing economy, the tourism industry has shown no signs of slowing down and instead has grown as an important source of foreign exchange for the country. And for the people on the ground, it has been creating jobs in India, providing direct and indirect employment. Job opportunities would be available in Travel Agencies, besides Public Relations and Advertising.

A new wave in this sector is medical tourism, growing at 30 per cent per year, because of easy availability, quickness and price efficiency. The professionalism and commitment of our health workers in the Corona times have impressed the entire world.

• Ayurveda and Naturopathy

With the increasing popularity of Ayurveda and Naturopathy, Yoga and Pranayama teachers will be in great demand. The best remedy for fibrosis is exercising the lungs. These sectors provide tremendous opportunities to marketing careers.

Besides the above mentioned prime sectors, there will definitely be career opportunities in:

• Health Care and Insurance
• Digital Marketing & Advertising
• E-Commerce
• Distribution and Marketing essential goods and services
• Business Analytics
• IT
• Online teaching platforms
• Agritech

What are the skill sets an MBA graduate would be expected to have in the post-Corona VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world?

Agility, team working, and coming up with novel solutions to problems would be appreciated.

As the well-known Prof. V L Mote of IIM Ahmedabad used to tell the students,

“You must have your head up in the eighteenth cloud, but feet firmly on the ground”,

Working styles would change completely: Avoiding unnecessary commuting, working from home, video conferencing and Google meets, and online learning on the MOOCs platforms may become the new norms. Flexi timing may be embraced by many.

Creativity and constrained optimisation would be at a premium: Indians are past masters at doing more with less. We always have a juggad solution for every problem.

About the author

Dr Kalyani Rangarajan is Dean, School of Management, IMS Unison University, Dehradun. She is a postgraduate in Mathematics and Management from the well-known Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. She has over 35 years of experience in banking, consulting and academics. She has co-authored two books, has over a dozen publications in international conferences and journals and has guided three doctoral candidates to obtain their PhD. She has won top prizes in international case competitions at IIM Ahmedabad and ISB Hyderabad. She has excellent experience in branding and positioning B-Schools in the hypercompetitive Indian B School landscape.

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha