Sarvesh Kadam

Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Management

India

Moving to New Zealand was a major change for Sarvesh Kadam but he’s adapted to life here quickly.

Sarvesh was born and raised in India and has spent most of his life in and around Bombay.

“The only place I’ve been outside my hometown is New Zealand, so it’s quite an experience for me.”

Sarvesh studied finance back in India and worked in research-based operations for about seven years. He decided he wanted to pursue further education then did a lot of research before deciding on New Zealand.

“Everything I read about or heard about is very true.”

He loves the weather here and the fact that Auckland is much quieter than cities in India.

New Zealand’s education system has been a big change for him. He comes from an exam culture, but says he always knew about the self-learning approach of developed countries.

“Experiencing it first-hand was a different ballgame altogether. The first assignment I was a headless chicken.”

Sarvesh passed that assignment, but his results weren’t as good as he’d hoped.

He began improving his performance thanks to a workshop offered by OPAIC’s Learning and Teaching Team, which he says was a real “stress-buster”. He also accessed help from the Learning Support Team.

He polished his stress-management and pressure management soft skills during his first study block.

His programme has also taught him not to be scared about long reports and how to find information and critically analyse it.

“Being in the course taught me to understand what critical reading is, what critical analysis is.”

Thanks to the collective efforts of staff at the polytechnic and his own proactive approach, he’s now exceeding his expectations.

He was top of his class at our recent Excellent Scholar Awards.

Sarvesh is now more than halfway through his programme and thinking about the future. He loves food and plans to use his finance background to find his way in the food industry after he graduates. Eventually he’d like to open his own café.

He’ll use what he's learned at OPAIC, particularly in his Project Management and Marketing for a Digital Age courses to achieve his goals.

Sarvesh says New Zealand is a land of opportunity.

“It’s still developing. There’s so much to do. There’s so much creativity that you can impose on this market right now.”

Read more about the Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Management here.