Abhijit Mutha
From intrapreneurship to entrepreneurship
It was in May 2004 that I first walked into PwC India’s Kamla Mills office in Mumbai. I had been placed with the firm through the campus recruitment programme at IIM Bangalore and was eagerly looking forward to solving the business world’s most pressing problems!
On the day of joining, my co-joiners and I were sent to a conference room, where we met Mohan Verma, one of the associate directors from advisory and our would-be boss. During our conversation with him, someone asked him what projects the firm was working on at the time. I will never forget the smile on Mohan’s face as he said, “We are looking at you guys to go out and get the projects!”.
This presented a great opportunity for us to work with minimal supervision and juggle between multiple activities such as business development, project management, recruitment, and more. We truly gained invaluable experience during those formative years.
Memorable training in Kolkata
One of my fondest memories from the early days with the firm is from the time when I was sent to Kolkata by Mohan to undergo training in Oracle apps. I reported to Kolkata’s Salt Lake office directly from the airport and I was promptly sent into a conference room where a training session in Bengali was in progress. While the language sounded sweet to the ears and the trainers were so nice, my colleague Manish and I did not have the heart to request that the training be conducted in English.
From PwC India to entrepreneurship
After eight years with the firm, I moved on from PwC India in May 2012. I shifted to Pune where I founded Primes & Zooms, a camera rental service dedicated to making high-end camera gear accessible to both hobbyists and professionals. What started as a side project, quickly grew to the point where it became my full-time endeavour. Today, P&Z is one of the largest photography rental services in the country and has a team size of 27 people, serving customers in Pune and Mumbai. A case study on Primes & Zooms has been published by Ivey Publishing and is available to institutes and universities worldwide through the Harvard Business Publishing network.
Lessons from my experience at PwC India
My learnings at PwC India played a significant role in the way I have built and continue to run my venture. A single-minded focus on customer problems and a philosophy of fair and ethical dealing with customers, trade partners and team members form the bedrock of our values at my new company. The strong systems and process orientation that I learnt at PwC India has ensured that the systems and processes at my firm are both robust and scalable. The initial experience of watching a business being built from ground up at PwC India taught me a lot about how to build my own. Influential mentors like Mohan Verma, Partha Chattoraj, Abhijit Ranade and Siddhartha Sen led by example and I learnt so much from each one of them about managing business and clients, executing projects and handling crises. In many ways, my time at the firm was a lesson in intrapreneurship, which helped ease my transition to entrepreneurship.
Some reflections
I am still in touch with my colleagues from PwC India, some of whom are partners today with the firm. I hear about how things have advanced now with state-of-the-art offices, people-first work cultures, flexible work schedules and clients who no longer insist on having teams on-site all the time. I envy young people who are starting their careers in consulting in an era that is full of possibilities and growth. At the same time, I hope that recent trends such as the preference for gig work over full-time jobs, aversion to hardship, and quiet quitting do not prevent them from putting in the effort required to earn a consultant’s right to advise people on running their businesses.
I also take this opportunity to congratulate young professionals currently working with the firm on being proud inheritors of the PwC legacy.
