BCG SEAsia head Vaishali Rastogi honoured with IIMA alumni award
The Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad has honoured six of its young alumni for 2019, including Vaishali Rastogi, head of BCG for Southeast Asia
Established in 1961 via the prompting of renowned Indian independence leader and the country’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA – one in network of twenty Indian Institutes of Management) is the nation’s leading provider of MBA programmes, ranked 7th last year in the Asia Pacific on the QS Global University charts.
A previous analysis from Livemint showed that by far away IIMA alumni made up the highest proportion of MBA-holding CEOs at BSE 500 companies, among them; Rajesh Gopinathan, the CEO and managing director of Indian-based global IT giant Tata Consultancy Services, who in 2014 was awarded by the IIMA with an inaugural Young Alumni Achiever’s Award. Joining him on that list; Vaishali Rastogi, head of BCG for Southeast Asia.
A 1997 IIMA master’s degree graduate, Rastogi has been named among a group of six as recipients of the 2019 Young Alumni Achiever’s Award, with the awards, now into their fifth edition, being open to alumni under the age of 45. Rastogi was joined in the corporate category by Warburg Pincus Managing Director Viraj Sawhney, and Sumit Jalan, Managing Director for Credit Suisse in India.
“It is an award that recognises excellence, but more than anything else, it is actually saying something about the motivation that drives these individuals,” commented IIMA Director Errol D’souza. “It is a journey from which everyone can learn. This sort of drive must have been inherent in them but we hope that some would have emerged at the institute and they continue to achieve more in the fields they are in.”
Joining Boston Consulting Group’s Mumbai office in 1997 (which is today headed by fellow IIMA graduate Alpesh Shah) as one of the strategy and management firm’s first cohort of consultants in the country, Rastogi has since established an impressive leadership resume, crossing to BCG’s Singapore office in 2000 and elected as the firm’s first female partner of Indian descent globally.
Since then, Rastogi has gone on to hold numerous leadership positions for BCG in the region, including as the current Asia-Pacific Marketing, Sales & Pricing practice leader and head of the firm’s Center for Customer Insight for Southeast Asia, ultimately rising to senior partner and head of BCG’s Southeast Asian practice – where she reports to recently elected Asia-Pacific chairman Neeraj Aggarwal, an IIMA graduate and 2016 Young Alumni Achiever’s awardee.
“Today I manage the whole of Southeast Asia,” said Rastogi on receiving her award. “I hope that it inspires the future leaders from IIMA to reach for the stars. I hope my journey will inspire women as well. I like mentoring women and see them grow… There is no ceiling except the one that you define in your own mind. If you can get over that, you can achieve whatever you want.”