Inspiring excellence: Abhishek Mandawewala (Homerton 2005)
Abhishek Mandawewala
"It’s funny because, at the time, I just couldn’t see the point of our class in Materials. My supervisor did an incredible job of making a difficult topic a bit more interesting…and luckily, some of that learning became embedded in me so that I can now easily grasp technical issues with our production systems."
Abhishek Mandawewala
“I was very fortunate”, says Abhishek Mandawewala (Homerton 2005). “My parents had the means to send me to Cambridge—although I planned to apply to Oxford to begin with, and it was my friend Pratik who encouraged me to apply to Cambridge instead, for the Manufacturing Engineering programme.”
As soon as Abhishek finished university, he returned home to Mumbai and joined the family textiles business, now known as AYM Syntex, making him one of the youngest Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in the country. The company is now one of the largest manufacturers of specialist synthetic yarns, it exports globally, and has the largest yarn dyeing house in Asia, featuring a 100% environmentally friendly facility.
“The textile industry in India is all about competing on cost”, he explains. “The labour force is abundant and low cost, with a blue-collar worker making about $250 per month. So there is limited innovation in the textile industry coming out of India—instead, everyone is reverse engineering what happened before, and looking to see where costs can be cut further.”
Abhishek saw a niche in the market and applied his learning to significantly expand the business. “I have also become effectively the Chief Innovation Officer because now half of what we sell is proprietary –it’s our intellectual property in developing synthetic yarns, and had I not done the Manufacturing Engineering course, I don’t think we’d be in this position.”
“It’s funny because, at the time, I just couldn’t see the point of our class in Materials. My supervisor did an incredible job of making a difficult topic a bit more interesting…and luckily, some of that learning became embedded in me so that I can now easily grasp technical issues with our production systems.”
He was at Homerton College in new en-suite accommodation. “I’d study in my room or at the Engineering Department library—that’s a fantastic place with huge desks to spread out all your paperwork, where you could hear a pin drop.” When not studying, he and his pals would hang out at the Leisure Centre at the top of Hills Road, or visit the clubs in the middle of town, and sometimes find places to eat further north of the centre with friends from Girton College. He also let off steam playing squash in the Homerton courts and regularly enjoyed taking part in cricket matches.
Abhishek sums up the different ways in which his experience at Cambridge, and the Manufacturing Engineering course in particular, has made a huge impact on his life:
“First, it inculcated a sense of excellence—having been tested together with the best students, this allowed me to propel my business forward.
"Second, the programme is pretty academic, and this helped me to build a work ethic and discipline that I apply now. You just had to keep up all the time during the term because you would need to discuss the work at weekly supervisions.
"Third, unlike India, where teaching in Engineering is based on rote learning and regurgitating for exams, in Cambridge we would be challenged to apply the concepts we had learnt to practical situations. This develops your rational and logical thinking.
"Fourth, we took part in many group projects during the final two years, and these built an understanding of teamwork, leadership, and how to interact in a professional setting.
"Finally, we had all sorts of extra classes that you wouldn’t expect, such as design, accounting, marketing and human resources…I am probably the only one among my peers in business who hasn’t done an MBA, because I didn’t need to!”
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