Introvert Student From Jodhpur Discovers a Skill and Passion for Visual Creation, and the Confidence to Communicate in Sales

Despite being extremely shy and soft spoken since childhood, Tarun Mehta harboured a desire to communicate and be an outgoing person. Born to a business family in Jodhpur, his introverted nature had put him in a groove throughout his adolescence, where he was following the traditionally laid out academic path. Like many others, it was an academically sound but rote journey to attaining and engineering degree in the future. He was finally jolted out of his complacency with a few academic failures in class XI.

This forced him to re-evaluate his pattern of living and made him eager to break out of it. So after his twelfth exams, he took a gap year to explore hobbies and professional paths, deciding to steer away from his initial plan to get an engineering degree.

For an introverted, homebound soul, Tarun had had quite an adventurous professional journey by the time he reached ‘Enterprise India Fellowship’. He had dropped a year in order to develop himself as a person, and pursued a coding and business development course to an internship with a startup, under his mentor ‘Vivek’ sir, who exposed him to a variety of professional scenarios, and trained him in a personal and vocational capacity.

The COVID 19 pandemic induced a slump in his activities, and he was trying to escape it. His goal was to associate with more skilled people, and be further involved in diverse activities. While looking for applicable opportunities he came across a video by Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Co-Founder of Enterprise India Fellowship. A quote in that video, ‘lazy people are not lazy, they are hungry, they want real problems, real projects and they want to work with experienced people and mentors‘ hit him hard and he decided to join the fellowship to seek out just that. 

All this is to say, Tarun had a zeal to develop himself, which almost teetered on anxiety at times. Working with Enterprise India helped him direct it better, and create himself anew.

Tarun was summarily active throughout his time at the Enterprise, participating in 11 different projects, including multiple renditions of ‘#karo’. He initially began working in the sales section of these initiatives, but soon found himself drawn towards the visual aspect of work. A natural artist and a quick study, he became adept at graphic designing. It also helped him communicate better professionally. Reserved to a fault, his refusal to talk to his team members properly had been the cause of a misunderstanding, during his first full time job with Enterprise. It was one of the formative incidents that brought Tarun out of his shell.

Another thing that helped him become a better communicator through a better arrangement of his thoughts and feelings, was the iterative blog writing process within the institute called ‘Conflexion’. He was reluctant to engage in it initially, afraid of confronting his thoughts and putting them out into the world. But with the help of his honorary brother, and mentor Akash, he managed to finish his second blog post, after failing to complete the first one. The last line of the blog post laid out his concurrent desires very clearly: ‘I want to get out of my self-doubt to appreciate myself, even if it is for small wins, and to present my ideas and work without hesitation.’ 

This feeling of inadequacy had dogged Tarun since childhood, which he was earnestly prepared to overcome. What Enterprise, its projects, and its people managed to do was facilitate that growth in a meaningful way. His ‘Conflexion’ posts stand testament to this intimate journey of self discovery, as he tracks his learnings and changes through the year. In one of them he writes, ‘There are two types of pain in life, one is sitting and thinking about the problems, and the other is getting out of your comfort zone and taking charge of them.‘ His experience at Enterprise helped him do the latter, as he explains: ‘It’s a feeling of doing more, engaging more, creating more and reflecting more. It made me confident to understand what I am good at and what should I focus on…‘

Over the stint of his partnership at Enterprise India Fellowship, Tarun has managed to develop an excellent coterie of professional and vocational skills, which he used as a sales catalyst for the institute. As his partnership approaches graduation, he has already landed a job with a traditional company, whom he is helping take their business into a more modern, corporate set up.

His first mentor Vivek sir, who was the one to offer him this new job, observes the growth in him:

Tarun Mehta

Hometown: Silvassa, Diu & Daman

College: SSR College of Arts, Commerce and Science, Silvassa
Subject: Bachelor of Business Administration – Human Resources

Interests/Cares About: helping businesses solve problems
Fellowship Span: Apr 2020- Aug 2021

Fellowship Activities Sneak Peak:

-Worked on 5+ projects including Enterprise projects like #start & #karo, and Chandrayaan 0.0  (with the Client – Area Sabha Association of Pune)

-Wrote 2 blogs, hosted a Green Room community story-sharing evening, 3 #karo workshops, co-designed and co-hosted a session for peers on ‘Decluttering the mind’

-Co-led a team of 7 new Enterprise Partners to organize #karo, and help them kickstart their fellowship experience by activating the “doing”  mindset 

Plan after Graduation:

– Working with the MD of KlugAvlon, the first Indian company to indigenously develop safety systems for cranes all the way back in the year 2000

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“As a mature organization, we were finding it difficult to incorporate today’s technological tools in our business. Under our internship programme, we hired Shiv, a student at the Enterprise India Fellowship. Shiv has been working for the last 6 months and has already successfully implemented CRM for the sales department. He is currently working on integrating cloud telephony with CRM and automating the communication through email and Whatsapp. He is hand-holding our sales team to help them get more productive using CRM. Shiv is focused, hard-working and doesn’t shy in taking the plunge to learn anything new. The organisation has greatly benefited from Shiv. With his approach and attitude, he is onto building a great success story.”

Rupesh Gupta
Managing Director, Klug Avalon

Akash, a mentor and friend from Enterprise, was thrilled at his evolving confidence and communication capabilities, as compared to the first days of his partnership:

‘QUOTE!‘

Over the length of his journey, in and out of Enterprise, Tarun Mehta has been successful in diversifying his skills, and going beyond his comfort zone to attempt, and excel at different jobs. But his passion remains with the field of sales, which he hopes to pursue and develop as a whole over the tenure of his profession.

The advice he leaves new partners of the Enterprise is, thus, perhaps meant as much for them, as it is a reminder for himself, going forward: ‘Make the most of it!‘

Interviewer: Akash Bhalerao
Author: Jagruti Jethwani
Video Editor: Rahul Devkar
Story Editors:  Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Akash Bhalerao, Ankita Parashar, Lubaina Cementwala, Yusuf Hakim
Webpage Designer: Dnyanesh Chandewar

Through this project, Shiv learned how to fundraise, create leads and close sales as well as create a unique user experience for the participants. Shiv contributed to the project with action-orientedness, discipline and punctuality. Ankita Parashar, Business Partner and Marketing Lead at Enterprise recalls, “When we interviewed Shiv for the Fellowship, he had a white board in his background and he carefully wrote notes from our conversation. We knew then, this guy won’t have to be hand held for anything, rather he will be leading!” And through this project, his peers and mentors were amazed to see his time management and “doer-ship” in action.

From experiencing day to day operations of his family business, he had learned that it was quite different from the theories learned in college which made him realise that applied knowledge is power. 

Before joining the fellowship Shiv had shared, “The primary reason I want to join the Enterprise India Fellowship is to gain practical knowledge by working on projects which will also help me build my career, skills, relationships, and self growth.”

And through the fellowship, that’s what he ended up doing. 

Throughout his fellowship journey, he worked on over five projects including in-house projects like #karo & #start and a client project called Chandrayaan0.0 with the Area Sabha Association of Pune. . 

Shiv considers #karo as the most meaningful part of his fellowship journey. Shiv says, “I won’t be able to explain how much it has impacted me. That word #karo is going to be stuck in my head, heart and life forever.”

In September 2020, all the Partners came together to co-create #karo 3.0 – a seven weekend-long online festival to celebrate the “art of doing”. The idea was to help people understand that just watching, learning, and hearing something is not enough. We need to DO it, #karo it!

Shiv worked in the sales and outreach team and also hosted one of the workshops . Public speaking did not come naturally for him, so he was stepping out of his comfort zone and asked for help when he needed it. On the day of the workshop, he  gracefully hosted the 150 participants, and courageously stepped out of his comfort zone. 

Following that, Shiv, along with Enterprise Partners Apeksha Rathod and Jagruti Jethwani, took up every opportunity to learn and do, stuck with the project through a couple iterations and became a part of the #karo leadership team. Recently they co-led a team of 7 new Enterprise Partners to organize #karo workshops, and helped them kickstart their respective fellowship journeys by activating the “doing” mindset.

Tarun Mehta

Hometown: Silvassa, Diu & Daman

College: SSR College of Arts, Commerce and Science, Silvassa
Subject: Bachelor of Business Administration – Human Resources

Interests/Cares About: helping businesses solve problems
Fellowship Span: Apr 2020- Aug 2021

Fellowship Activities Sneak Peak:

-Worked on 5+ projects including Enterprise projects like #start & #karo, and Chandrayaan 0.0  (with the Client – Area Sabha Association of Pune)

-Wrote 2 blogs, hosted a Green Room community story-sharing evening, 3 #karo workshops, co-designed and co-hosted a session for peers on ‘Decluttering the mind’

-Co-led a team of 7 new Enterprise Partners to organize #karo, and help them kickstart their fellowship experience by activating the “doing”  mindset 

Plan after Graduation:

– Working with the MD of KlugAvlon, the first Indian company to indigenously develop safety systems for cranes all the way back in the year 2000

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