Abhijit Kashyap Borah of Assam has been promoted to the head of global communications and public affairs at RHI Magnesita recently. Now Abhijit will be based in its headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
Prior to that, he was leading RHI Magnesita’s communications and public affairs functions for India, West Asia and Africa region from its regional headquarters in Gurgaon.
RHI Magnesita is the world’s largest refractory products, solutions and technology company with annual revenue of around Euro 3.6 billion (Rs 32,000 crore) operating in more than 170 countries.
With this Abhijit becomes one of the key individuals of the organization. Abhijit spoke to The News Mill after the development.
Some of the excerpts:
Q. What does it mean to you to be the head of global communications and public affairs of RHI Magnesita?
A. I’m happy at this moment. I look forward to the support and guidance from all my colleagues, peers and business partners.
In this role, I will be leading a team of communications experts based in Vienna and also spread across all the continents to drive internal and external stakeholder communications, including digital communications.
Additionally, I will spearhead the public affairs engagement of the company with various stakeholders like the European Union, UNIDO, various governments, institutions, and industrial bodies on some key topics like sustainability, de-carbonization and diversity.
Q. You started your career as a journalist with Amar Asom in Guwahati. Tell us something about the initial days.
A. Yes, I had the great opportunity of learning from some of the stalwarts like the late Homen Borgohain sir, Manoj Goswami and mentors like Gautam Sarmah, Dhruva Mahanta, Bedabrat Bora and several others during my initial days at Amar Asom.
I spent around five years in journalism, and I consider those as my initial days of great learning. Journalism taught me the finer aspects of ‘storytelling’, which is a basic requirement for a communication professional.
My first break in the corporate world came in 2007 as a PR executive with a conglomerate – DS Group. Since then I had the opportunity to contribute to and lead the corporate communications function of some leading brands like Dabur, Yamaha, Everest and now RHI Magnesita.
Q. The journey must have been filled with challenges and bad days. How did you overcome these?
A. During all these years of professional life, I have had my share of ups and downs, struggles, and challenges. Being grounded, patient, persistent and having self-belief in challenging times is always key to come out of it.
Q. How were your early days in Tezpur?
A. I was born in a middle-class family (father: Babul Chandra Borah and mother: Banti Borah) and my father was a government employee. I went to the Government Boys Higher Secondary School in Tezpur before doing my graduation in economics from Darrang College and thereafter going to Gauhati University.
I developed a keen interest in debating during my school days, and eventually became a regular in the debating circuit of Assam, representing and winning it for my college and university in most of the leading state or regional debating competitions.
Q. New-age Assamese youth have broken the barriers and reached new heights in different fields. Your thoughts on that?
A. Absolutely, from Bollywood to Silicon Valley, today you would find Assamese people doing some path-breaking work in various fields. And what is amazingly beautiful is that, wherever we are, most of us carry our roots and spread it. For any nationality or ethnic community, it is so important. Even before I moved to Vienna, I already had been included in a large Facebook group of some wonderfully skilled Assamese professionals working in Europe, which I did not even know. You see the strong emotional connection. I wish more success for our community in whichever field it may be.
Q. Again, unfortunately, at the same time, we are still stuck in an era where most of the parents are after government jobs in Assam. People like you, Amarjyoti Barua (CFO of Mahindra Group) and others have proved that people can be successful not being in the government sector. What would be your message to the youths and parents?
A. Times have changed rapidly. There are innumerable career opportunities today. Some new-age fields like data science or AI didn’t even exist a few years back. Today, we live in a world where it does not matter whether you work in government or private sector. Even the government these days has started hiring the expertise of subject matter experts from the private sector. So what matters is skills and expertise.
In whichever field or organization you are patience, perseverance, honesty, hard work and continuous learning stay as the guiding pillars of success.
