UEA

Karan Mantroga, MBA Strategic Carbon Management 2010

Karan Mangotra expects one day to be ‘living the dream’.  He is shown here with a set of wind turbine blades at The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi.

With a good degree in computer engineering, Karan rose quickly through the management levels in his first major business role at TATA Consultancy Services based in Mumbai, India.  Only three years after graduating, he was a software engineer managing a team of 11 people and working on several major IT and communications projects; including one to run a communications network for the Indian Army!

By mid 2009, Karan was beginning to plan his future career…

‘I had been working at TATA Consultancy Services for nearly five years; and while I had been successful and was enjoying the new level of responsibility which had been given to me, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was really all I wanted for my career.  Immediately after graduating I had done a 10 month piece of work for the Presidential Palace in Delhi.  It was essentially a carbon footprinting and reduction exercise and it proved to be both worthwhile and enjoyable for me.  Worthwhile after we projected an annual energy saving for the palace of nearly 990 Mwh: enjoyable because the chance to be part of energy efficiency measures in such a prestigious building was a real pleasure.’

‘While I took satisfaction from meeting the challenges which the TATA job presented, I kept thinking about the energy saving project and how rewarding it was for me personally to be working on something like that.  At that time I was taking an interest in the politics and economics behind the global carbon reduction issue.  I began to look around at how I might pursue this, and came across the Strategic Carbon Management MBA at UEA which claimed to be the first of its kind in the world.’

‘When I was accepted into the business school my friends and family questioned me about the wisdom of moving to the UK for an intensive masters degree in quite a narrow subject area.  I must say, when I arrived in Norwich from Mumbai late one evening in January 2009, I began to wonder if they might be right!  It was dark and bitterly cold and I had to sit outside on the pavement in the snow and ice with my belongings and wait for my new landlord to arrive home!’

‘In a few weeks I had found a new place to stay, begun to explore Norwich (which is a fine city for a mature student) and was settling into the coursework.  Looking ahead I could see that there was going to be modules in both semesters which explored the political and economic angle of global carbon markets – the thing which interested me most.  I completed my MBA in December 2010 – it wasn’t always easy (there’s a lot of hard slog in a one-year MBA) but for the most-part I enjoyed the course and being in Norwich.’

‘I returned home and after four months had secured three new positions as a result of my new qualifications and education.  With TERI, The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, two of the positions require me to research a Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) for Indiaand to compare national climate change policies of governments around the world.  You can imagine that these things are interest me greatly and I see this as the foundation of a new career for me in low-carbon activities.’

‘I am enjoying the research very much and sometimes think about the time after my project at the Presidential Palace and know that at last I’m fully participating in the environmental policy work I dreamed of back then.  It’s not entirely down to my carbon MBA, of course, I had to put in the hard work but the business school has given me the qualifications and experience to know that one day I’ll be living the dream.’