In 2015, when I went back to visit my hometown in North-East, I knew there was something different. It wasn’t the place, but my perspective. “How can something so beautiful be so unknown to the world?”, I thought to myself. At this very moment, I made the decision to quit my corporate job in Mumbai and work on bridging the gap between the Northeast and mainland India. I convinced three of my college friends to shift to the North-East and join me in the vision to help travellers explore more than five hundred diverse tribes of the region. ChaloHoppo, an experiential tourism company, was established as a result. We worked at the grassroots level, developed tourism products, and were wholly committed to the triple bottom line. We educated people with real content from the North-East of India via social media platforms. With our efforts we could successfully bring many places of North-East India on the world map.
But things took a turn during the pandemic when the whole tourism industry went through a standstill. I came to the realisation that it was time to move to higher education and acquire new skills. I felt I could benefit from this free time to study the science underlying decisions like pricing and negotiation as I was making the majority of them intuitively. Even though it was one of the hardest choices I had to make, I decided to leave my startup.
My ups and downs-filled journey led me to ISB, where I aspire to have a greater impact on the Indian business community. The perks of fantastic network and academic atmosphere took me to the institute and set me on the journey of lifelong transformation.
– Chetan Jalan, PGP Co’23
