Girish Sharma’s LinkedIn post landed in your feed and you probably scrolled past it first. But then you went back. You read it again. Because somewhere between the Zomato delivery bag and the Faculty of Management Studies acceptance letter, there’s actually something worth paying attention to, not because it’s inspirational in the way that word usually gets thrown around, but because it’s honest about how much of this journey was just refusing to accept where he was.When TOI spoke to Girish over the phone, he sounded calm but there was a sense of confidence in that tone that spoke volumes about the marathon he had run to achieve his dream.Years ago, Sharma was a Zomato delivery rider. He was teaching students on the side. He was working at a call centre too to keep the money coming. “COVID was a breather”Then COVID hit. Most people remember lockdown as something awful. Sharma remembers it differently. It was a breather. He realized that this, the delivery gig, the side teaching, the endless daily survival at his workplace, wasn’t what he wanted his life to be. So he started connecting dots. Different interests, different experiences, different parts of his life that didn’t seem to go anywhere. And somewhere in that process, he decided he wanted an MBA from a top B-school..
The CAT prep
Here’s where the story gets real. He didn’t know how any of it worked. The CAT exam, the interview process, the rankings. He had to learn while he was trying. That part matters because in most of the success stories we skip over this part: the confusion, the failed attempts, the sense that you’re playing a game everyone else already understands.His first attempt at CAT didn’t work. Neither did the second. He kept trying. By CAT’23, he finally scored a decent percentile. Except every single college waitlisted him or rejected him outright. He got one acceptance, but he knew it wasn’t where he wanted to be. So instead of taking the win and being grateful, he went back. He tried again.
When he belled the CAT
Sharma rejected his own victory and went back for another shot. And this time, Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi said yes. FMS is one of the toughest colleges to crack in India. Sharma scored 98.94 percentile.Read his LinkedIn post here
“You need to have the hunger to achieve your goals”
When asked how he managed to fit so many things in his daily schedule, he said “You need to have the hunger to achieve your goals. Once you are determined, everything else, like time constraints or a lack of resources, becomes an excuse.” Sharma thanks his family. He acknowledges the people who guided him through CAT prep, through interviews, through the constant rejection. He thanks his friends who helped him sail through difficult times and motivated him to stay on track. “If you’re somewhere in the middle of your own version of this, keep going,” he says. Not because it’ll definitely work out. Not because hard work always pays off. Just—keep going. Because the only thing worse than still being in the middle is stopping.That’s not inspirational. That’s just true.