CHIT-CHAT with Alumni Season II: Episode 2- Establishing the High Road to One’s Ambition
Published: 2021-09-04 16:14:27

The **SPECTRUM** club is one of the core technical societies of the College of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneshwar founded in 2015 by **Mr.Bikram Keshari Panda**(2015 graduate), scrutinizing on the sole motive of Instrumentation and Electronics Engineering branch having a club of its own.

Apart from being involved in a plethora of competitions and technical events, the club decided to start its very own "**Alumni Talk Series**" called **"Chit-Chat with Alumni"**.

The first season of the series served as a torch bearer for the students to connect with their seniors contributing in both their personal and professional development. And we have continued to strengthen the bond even further with the **Second Series**.

The second episode of Season 2 was hosted on the 29th of August, 2021 and the speaker for the evening was none other than **Mr.Ronak Kumar Samantray**, the man who pursued his ambition of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Mr. Ronak Kumar Samantray graduated with a Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science from the College of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneswar. Before taking the entrepreneurship route, he was a senior software engineer at Microsoft. He is the co-founder of NowFloats, a start-up that helps small businesses to get online and discovered. He is also the co-inventor and chief advisor of Bolt, the world's first smartphone charger for motorbikes. He has also co-designed a “Speech Glove” having the ability to recognize finger gesture, converting them to speech. He is also an INK Fellow, 2013. He was also on the Forbes 30 under 30 for his contributions towards enterprise technology.

He started out the session with talking about his journey to CET, his college days being a variety of problem statements and experiences to be solved as he put it and the hostel life helping him in adapting to the brand new phase of his life. He laughed it out by saying “Life has to be a chaotic Jumanji Experience for there’s no fun with it being smooth and sailing. **Chaos leads to progress**.” 

He listed out the three assets he worked on during his college life- **Core skills, Understanding people** and **Hustling**. Diving deep, he recalled upon coordinating with his seniors in figuring out various fields and domains in first year, honing his coding skills in the second year and researching in third and fourth year. He considered understanding people’s perspective to be very important as it helps one deal with situations in a peaceful and formal manner.  Hustling, according to him, was always a very important, mandatory point as one should hustle everywhere for it helps in overcoming the barriers of others’ opinions and gives confidence to strive further. He exclaimed procrastination and comfort zone as self-created phenomenon in a person’s head.

He then walked us through an insight on his **“High Way to Ambition”**.

![Presentation](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/e6qzab6dv2af7mr6cji3.png)

**Construct of Ambition**
Firstly, he advised us to plot a vision graph with passion being the lever so that it keeps the graph up motivating us to go higher but not without the cost. He believes that **One should always have an Ambition graph designed in his head following which he/she works hard to achieve it**.

![Construct](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/9fphnly6pvgw68s1qrt1.png)

**Path to Ambition**
There are infinite paths in each person’s life with different routes, all bouncing around one’s ambition. The shortest path never exists in life. Each human is combination of his/her events in life. **One must always believe to be the discoverer of his/her own path. The path to ambition should be unique and infinite.**

![Path](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/akzg465k18at5uwkxqoa.png)

**Typical Rise to Success**
He described the beginning as a very slow curved erratic graph, i.e., the Hyper Growth Stage or Discovery Stage comprising of chaos, belief in one’s ideas from the very beginning, working as a team and having good mentors to guide us through our hustle. Rising up to the J curve, life flattens out for a certain period which makes one process oriented and structured. Furthermore, operating at a certain height might make one miss out certain things which is where loyalty and predictability come to place and makes one data driven.

![Path](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ylud7ka5ho5yelg5vtl1.png)
 
He ended his presentation with a quote **“Keep your eye on the Light House, Ignore the storm.”** elaborating it as Ambition being like a light house to us and storm, the cost we pay to reach it.

He encouraged us to **Stutter, struggle and reach our Lighthouse of Ambition.**

The conference was followed by an interactive Q n A with many questions from students asking about his path to entrepreneurship, the pros and cons of the business world, his idea and visions for the future, his advice to the young minds with goals and zeal to achieve and much more.

One of the attendees named Abraar Ahmad Khan asked about 
**How difficult it is for him to take risk if scenario during his college days was compared to his job now** to which he replied : 
The mantra is to "always decide and do" and not ponder upon the consequences. He believes in going for an idea even if it's risky for he would be at peace knowing that at least he took a chance and did something cool.

![QnA](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/vteavxdx5mk9eykbfia0.png)

The students were eager to hear more from him as it was everybody’s curiosity towards a man whose idea has brought about such a change to the world, motivating us to follow our dreams and aspirations.

It was an honor to have interacted with a person who pursued his passion and turned his ambition to reality. We wish him all the best for future endeavours!