Step up, Do more, Be more!

“Official” Me

Atul Magoon is an entrepreneur, public speaker, and author. He is an author of a management book “Extraordinary – 5 Steps to achieve success”  Penguin publication and motivational articles published in leading magazines. He is founder of a business consulting and training company that provides focuses on helping small and mid-size companies in process improvement, change management and leadership development. Prior, he worked for three years with Deloitte Consulting with focus on Financial Services and Consumer Products. Atul holds a degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

“The complete” Me

I am an engineer by education, a consultant by profession, a thinker by passion and a man by nature.

I was born in Rohtak, a town in the State of Haryana, India. I did my schooling in the same town, and made most out of school days as I was good in sarcasm, studies, and sports (in particular order). Everything was going well, except that I was getting older by the day. The day arrived when like every middle class Indian kid, I had to choose between becoming a Doctor and an Engineer. But for me, the choice was easy, mathematics was much more exciting where one could solve most questions with couple of formulas as compared to Biology where every name is 50 letters long and hard to pronounce.

Bright students in India are expected to prepare for IIT, the premier school of India. I also took up the challenge. It meant that I had to keep sarcasm and sports aside for two years and focus on studies. A compromise but worth it! Competition for getting into IIT is tough, probably one of the hardest in the world. One needs his share of luck as well, and I had mine, to secure a place in IIT. In the process, I learnt two lessons that will stay with me forever – 1. If you believe you can, you can 2. The harder you try, the luckier you get.

Life in IIT Delhi is like any other college, except for skewed gender ratio (15 guys to 1 girl) and few courses where 80% attendance is mandatory. But diversity of students, intensity of passion, competitive spirit and living life with enthusiasm are routines of the day and experiences of the lifetime. In my second year at college, I got a chance to visit UK for a summer internship. I travelled extensively and many things happened for the first time. In third year, I went to the US for summer internship and again many things happened for the first time (I nearly drowned during an adventure sport). In fourth year, I was all set to go to Italy for summer internship, but this time something happened for the first time even before I had left the country. I developed a ligament injury while playing soccer and was put on bed for a month. Italy is now on my ‘countries to visit’ list.

In 2007, I joined Deloitte’s Strategy Consulting group in Hyderabad. For first six months, I carried the college kid in me – chasing fun, hiding from work, laughing at people, winning arguments. But soon all became mundane. I started to crave for meaning, creativity and value creation. I thought about various career options – consulting, online website for movie tickets, trading in stock market, developing cartoon characters, stand up comedy but everything was a mere attraction. Finally, I came across the writings of management thought leaders like Peter Drucker, Ram Charan, and their ideas on building businesses through right investment in people and processes to improve society field. These ideas and their lifestyle made an impression on me. Now I enjoy meeting people, listening to their stories, and the exercise of brainstorming business and life ideas to come up with new and better ideas.