Gazal Garg Is A Wildcard.
A corporate strategy analyst turned full-time content creator, Gazal Garg is about as unconventional as MBA applicants get. Yet, this year, she’s headed to IESE Business School in Barcelona with a full Forté Fellowship, awarded to women who exhibit exemplary leadership, represent diverse backgrounds and demonstrate a commitment to advancing women in business.
Gazal grew up in Delhi in a conservative business family and was a top performing student with an interest in Economics. She says she chose to get a B.Sc in Economics from Narsee-Monjee Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai because of its focus on Applied Economics. As a girl from a conservative Indian family who got a lot of opportunities that other women in her family didn’t, Gazal says she always felt a responsibility to give back.
After interning there while at college, upon graduation Gazal joined Landmark Group in the UAE, one of the largest retail organisations in India and the Middle East, as a Corporate Strategy Analyst. Gazal was the only woman in the corporate strategy team, working with many international fashion, lifestyle & consumer goods brands and she soon grew dissatisfied with what she saw as the toxic beauty standards these industries encouraged. With a strong background in theatre and debating, Gazal spotted an opportunity in the emerging creator economy in India and started putting together a business model for herself.
Looking to make a difference, Gazal left Landmark to become a content creator and a social media influencer. She started her own eponymous company, taught herself filmmaking & marketing and started making social media content that empowered Indian women. Amassing over a hundred thousand social media followers, her content combatted stigmas like an entrenched bias against dark skin, something Gazal was bullied about when she was growing up.
A year later, Gazal developed her next ambition; starting a more inclusive fashion & beauty brand in the future. First though, she needed experience working for a major fashion, beauty or consumer goods brand. She soon realised that a European MBA was the best way to learn the business skills and network she would need and it would also open doors to work at European fashion conglomerates.
Gazal contacted almost a dozen admissions consultants but decided to work with Admissions Gateway because she says they were the only ones that understood her background, digital marketing and the creator economy.
“That was really comforting. I knew they would be able to tell my story the right way to business schools.”
Gazal says her consultant lived and breathed with her throughout the admissions process, from mentoring her for the GMAT to helping her with resumes, essays, interview preparation and even scholarship negotiations.
She says what kept her going through the long, difficult process though were the words of her counsellor.
“It’s not a sprint it’s a marathon.”
Gazal advises that applicants contact admissions committees for profile evaluations. She says she contacted multiple ad-coms because of her low GMAT score of 650 but received positive feedback about her profile, encouraging her to apply. She decided not to retake the GMAT to improve her score and instead concentrated on creating compelling applications.
She ended up applying to her dream school; IESE and she won a full Forté Fellowship as well.
Gazal says that while it is extremely arduous, the MBA application journey is also a learning process, a transformative experience in itself and an opportunity for self-growth.
“As long as you are curious to learn and grow in the applications process, you’ll have fun.”