ITC Meets Rajat Gupta

From Rajat Gupta's interview in Business Today.

What were your options after you graduated from IIT-D?

Well, everybody was going into management; you either began as an management trainee or you went to B-school. I had got a wonderful job at ITC. I had also applied to B-schools, both in India and abroad. I was accepted at the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, but preferred Harvard, where I got financial aid. I told ITC then that I wasn't going to join them. They wouldn't believe me because nobody had turned them down. So, they actually paid my airfare to come and meet them in Calcutta to explain why I wasn't joining them. Ajit Haksar, who was then ITC's chairman, was among those whom I met. I explained to them that I was going to Harvard, and only then did they understand.

Apparently Rajat Gupta didn’t tell ITC about his scholarship to do MBA at Harvard Business School when he told them that he wasn’t going to join them. Probably ITC called him on phone and still he didn’t tell them about the Harvard offer. ITC made arrangement for Gupta to fly from Delhi to Calcutta to explain why and at that time too he was quiet about Harvard. Only when he went to Calcutta after flying over 1000 miles and met senior executives of the company including its chairman Ajit Haksar, he decided to tell them that he was not going to join ITC because of the scholarship from coveted Harvard Business School!

Awfully shy for a person who debated at IIT Delhi and was going to attend a B-school that emphasized class participation. Moreover, ITC paying airfare to listen to a fresh graduate with no job skills, why he won’t be joining them. Something seems very special here.