Ram Pattabiraman

General Manager - Sales and Operations
Paloma Australia Enterprises

After studying engineering in India, Ram Pattabiraman held sales and marketing roles across major retail and FMCG companies such as Dick Smith Electronics and Coca-Cola in Australia. Last year, Ram teamed up with a fellow SGSM MBA student and friend to buy Paloma Australia.

‘I decided to study an MBA because I wanted to know the “why” behind the “what” for things I was doing in the real world.

‘It was literally 17 years after I completed my first degree that I enrolled for the MBA. I chose SGSM because it had smaller classes and so more interaction with the faculty and fellow students.

‘The MBA really gave me the confidence to go out and make what was a distant aspiration a reality. What we are doing today is a direct consequence of doing the MBA – we decided to buy a company and apply our knowledge straightaway. 

‘Our plan is to make this business very profitable. We have been able to systemise the financials, have started the journey of transforming the brand, and have applied operations management principles which has had a big impact on the bottom line – all things we learned during the MBA.’