“A strategic and extroverted professional passionate about technology, storytelling, and collaboration to scale inclusive, sustainable growth.”

Hometown: Pune, Maharashtra

Fun fact about yourself: I’ve travelled to 26 countries across Asia & Africa and made a local friend in each country!

Undergraduate School and Degree: Pune Institute of Computer Technology – B.Tech, Computer Engineering

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school?

Acidaes Solutions (BUSSINESSNEXT) – Regional Sales Manager (Middle East, Africa & Central Asia), based in Dubai.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025?

As part of HKU’s one-year MBA, I did not pursue a traditional summer internship. Instead, I chose to work on a consulting project with Scandium in Hong Kong, helping them design a go-to-market strategy for a new digital product and perform market research.

Where will you be working after graduation?

After graduation, I plan to work in a strategy role at a fintech or an emerging technology company focusing on the intersection of product, brand, and business strategy. I am targeting roles such as a Corporate Strategy Manager or Product Strategy Lead at firms that are using data, payments, and digital platforms to drive inclusion and more sustainable economic activity at established players like Revolute, Stripe or Visa, or at high-growth fintech/tech startups in Asia or the Middle East.

In the long term, I want to leverage this experience to help build or lead a venture that applies emerging technologies to air-quality and ocean-conservation challenges in India and other emerging markets, turning environmental health from an externality into a core business value driver.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

At HKU Business School, I serve on the committee of the student-led AI & Tech Club. In that role, I helped shift the club from being tool-focused to impact-focused—organizing sessions where we explored how AI and emerging technologies can be used for financial inclusion, climate resilience, and ocean health – not just productivity hacks. I co-designed workshops that paired technical demos with discussions on ethics, bias, and responsible deployment, giving classmates both the “how” and the “should we” of AI.

Beyond the club, I have actively mentored classmates making non-traditional career pivots, particularly those transitioning from engineering or the public sector into strategy roles. I see my contribution less as a title and more as a connector: bringing together people, ideas, and opportunities across our cohort, and making sure classmates with quieter voices still shape the direction of our community.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school?

The moment I am most proud of during Business school came not from the academic space but from the extracurricular activities such as making the cut to be part of the HKU Post Graduate Football Team. I have tried to do it justice, and it was an honour every time I got to wear our crest on my chest.

What achievements are you most proud of in your professional career?

Before my MBA, I led brand strategy and growth planning for CRMNEXT across 27 markets in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. The achievement I’m most proud of is building a disciplined yet flexible planning system that helped us win tier-one banking clients while transforming how our region operated.

Instead of treating strategy as a once-a-year slide deck, and as the youngest Sales Manager in my organization’s history, I introduced a recurring pattern of planning, storytelling, and review. We aligned on priorities, and linked them to measurable outcomes, and built internal narratives that made sense to sales teams in Nigeria, product managers in India, and partners in the Gulf. Over time, this contributed to strong regional growth and far better cross-functional alignment. For me, it proved that the real power of strategy lies not in complexity, but in how many people can retell it clearly and execute against it.

Why did you choose this business school?

I chose HKU Business School because it sits at a unique crossroad: China, Southeast Asia, and the broader global economy. Having built my career across the Middle East and Africa, I wanted a program where emerging markets wasn’t a side note, but the core of the conversation, and there is no better place than the Greater Bay Area for this.

HKU offered exactly that. Cases, company projects, and guest speakers regularly challenged us with the realities of operating in fast-growing but imperfectly structured environments—where regulation shifts quickly, infrastructure is uneven, and technology leapfrogs legacy systems. That context matters deeply to my long-term goal: leveraging emerging technologies to drive sustainable growth and environmental resilience across Asia and my home country, India.

What was your favorite course as an MBA?

Advanced Negotiation was my favorite elective because it turned something abstract— “being a good negotiator”—into a tangible, trainable skill. The course used intense simulations that mirrored real life: multi-party deals, cross-cultural conflicts, and situations where the obvious “win” would damage long-term trust.

The structured frameworks we learned—on interests vs. positions, sequencing, and trust-building—gave me a repeatable way to prepare and reflect. Coming from a background in cross-border strategy, I realized how often my work had actually been complex negotiation: aligning regulators, partners, and internal teams. The course gave me a more deliberate toolkit to navigate those moments and, importantly, to use negotiation to create value rather than just claim it.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school?

My favourite tradition is HKU’s “Global Night,” where students turn the campus into a moving mosaic of food, music, and stories from around the world. On the surface, it’s a fun cultural festival; underneath, it reflects how our school truly operates.

You see a classmate from Mainland China learning Bollywood steps, a European student explaining Korean street food, and someone from Africa attempting Cantonese tongue twisters. It captures what I love about HKU: diversity isn’t just represented; it’s celebrated and actively exchanged. That spirit carries into group projects and career conversations, where it’s normal to ask, “How would this play in your home market?” and then really listen.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it?

The most impactful case I studied was in my Macroeconomics elective: an in‑depth look at Foxconn’s Mega factories and how the “China +1” strategy is reshaping global supply chains. We dug into how a single policy shift—driven by geopolitics, rising labour costs, and risk diversification—forces a giant like Foxconn to rethink everything from capital allocation and labour sourcing to automation and country risk. It was the first time I saw, in such stark detail, how macro forces like trade policy, currency dynamics, and demographic trends cascade down into operational decisions on factory floors in India, Vietnam, and beyond.

The biggest lesson for me was that macroeconomics is not a backdrop; it’s a design constraint for strategy. Companies like Foxconn don’t just “follow cheap labour”—they balance political risk, infrastructure quality, environmental pressures, and long-term sustainability in ways that can make or break national development trajectories. As someone who wants to work at the intersection of tech, strategy, and sustainability, especially in markets like India, this case sharpened my understanding that any plan—whether it’s a new fintech product or an emerging tech solution for air and ocean health—must be built with a clear view of the macro currents it will have to navigate.

What did you love most about your business school’s town?

What I love most about Hong Kong is its density of contradictions—in the best way. It’s a place where modern skyscrapers overlook working harbours, hiking trails start minutes from subway stations, and traditional markets sit beside cutting-edge fintech hubs.

For someone passionate about both emerging technologies and environmental sustainability, Hong Kong feels like a living lab. The city constantly forces you to think about trade-offs: growth vs. liveability, efficiency vs. resilience, development vs. conservation. That tension has sharpened my ambition to work on solutions that don’t accept “either-or” as the default, especially when I think about air and ocean conditions back home in India.

What business leader do you admire most?

I most admire Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce. He built a world-class technology company while hard-wiring stakeholder capitalism into its DNA through the 1-1-1 model—donating 1% of equity, product, and employee time to social impact. I’m inspired by how he treats cloud software not just as a profit engine, but as an infrastructure for philanthropy, climate action, and systemic change.

What resonates with me is his willingness to use corporate power to take clear positions on issues like climate, equality, and public education, even when it’s uncomfortable. As someone who wants to work in tech and fintech strategy and eventually tackle air and ocean degradation in markets like India, I see Benioff as proof that you can build a globally admired brand, deliver strong financial performance, and still put societal and environmental impact at the centre of your business narrative.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI?

HKU has integrated AI into both the curriculum and student life. In class, we used AI tools for market analysis, scenario planning, and even drafting early versions of strategic narratives. Outside class, my role on the AI & Tech Club committee has given me a front-row seat to how classmates from different backgrounds experiment with AI—from coders building models to marketers using it for creative testing.

The biggest insight I’ve gained is that AI is a lever for breadth, not a replacement for depth. It can massively accelerate information gathering and ideation, but it doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to ask better questions, understand context, or weigh ethical implications. That’s especially true when I think about applying AI to environmental challenges: the technology can guide us to patterns and predictions, but humans still have to decide what a “good” outcome looks like.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire?

I most admire Ms. Tiffany Roberts. She chose to do her MBA in Hong Kong after working in Deloitte as a Senior Consultant in London, UK, and she has a rare ability to keep both human stories and business metrics in view at the same time

In class, she pushes us to question who benefits and who is left out when we design a new business model or apply a new technology. Outside class, she quietly shows up for people—reviewing resumes late at night, organizing informal check-ins during stressful recruiting weeks, and making sure international students feel at home. Watching her has reminded me that leadership is less about centre stage and more about consistent, intentional acts of kindness.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?

First, I want to build or lead a business that uses emerging technologies—data, AI, and digital platforms—to tackle air pollution and ocean degradation in markets like India. My long-term vision is to help create scalable models where environmental health is not an externality, but a core driver of value for businesses and communities.

Second, I want to eventually return to the classroom as a practitioner-teacher, leading a course on “Technology, Strategy, and Sustainability in Emerging Markets.” My own journey has been shaped by people who turned messy, real-world experience into frameworks and stories I could use. I’d like to do the same for the next generation of leaders.

What made Paramvir such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?

Paramvir Singh embodies the spirit of HKU Business School through his curiosity, collaboration, and purposeful leadership. A natural connector, he bridges disciplines and cultures, bringing clarity and empathy to every discussion. In class, his strategic thinking links macroeconomic trends, technology, and human behavior. Peers value him for his insight, mentorship, and inclusive approach, especially those navigating career transitions.