From Pune to Coventry: How Warwick Business School Helped Gaurav Pivot from Software Engineering to Product Management at Chase

Gaurav's journey from starting his career as a Java developer at TCS in India to becoming a Product Manager at Chase in London began with the realization that software development wasn't the long-term career path he wanted. 

After a couple of years in the industry, he decided to make a deliberate shift into product management and chose a Master's in Management at Warwick Business School instead of following the more familiar US MS route. The move gave him the opportunity to build towards a career beyond coding, but breaking into the UK job market came with its own challenges. Gaurav applied to more than 500 roles before finally landing a graduate offer at Chase, just before Christmas and 3 months after completing his coursework. Today, he works on Chase's fraud platform team as part of its graduate rotational program. Alongside his full-time product role, he has also started a sustainable gifting business in the UK, building something of his own on weekends.

For Gaurav, studying in the UK became a way to make a planned career transition rather than simply add another qualification to his engineering background. From moving away from software development to exploring opportunities beyond the roles he initially associated with companies like JPMorgan Chase, each step opened up a different side of his career.

Gaurav's Journey at a Glance

• From: India
• Background: Java Developer at TCS
• Course: Master's in Management, Warwick Business School
• Career Shift: Software Development → Product Management
• Job Search: Applied to 500+ roles
• Breakthrough: Secured a graduate offer at Chase just before Christmas
• Now: Product Manager at Chase, London, on the graduate rotational program
• Side Venture: Runs a sustainable gifting business in the UK

“Here’s Gaurav, in his own words.”

Q. What made you want to move away from your original career path in software engineering?

I graduated from Pune Institute of Computer Technology in 2021 with a degree in computer science and got a campus placement at TCS as a Java developer. I actually enjoyed the work, but I couldn't see myself doing it long-term, five or ten years down the line. What really caught my interest was watching my manager interact with clients and stakeholders directly. That pulled me toward roles like business analyst and product management, and product specifically stood out to me.

Q. Why a master's, and why the UK specifically?

There were really two ways to pivot into product, work in tech for a couple of years and switch organically, or get a master's in management and use that to make the leap directly. Since studying abroad had always been a personal goal anyway, I went with the second route. I did consider the US, like most Indian students do, but an MS there is very technical, which wasn't what I wanted, and an MBA typically needs five to seven years of experience plus a tuition cost that's extraordinarily high. A Master's in Management, aimed at people with zero to two years of experience, fit my profile far better, and the UK had strong options for it, along with the post-study work visa and a genuinely strong fintech job market.

Q. Which universities did you apply to, and how did you land on Warwick?

I applied to London Business School, University of Manchester, Bayes Business School, and Warwick, all for the same Master's in Management program. I did the entire application process myself, no consultancy, though I did lean on a school friend who was a year ahead of me and had already done his MiM at INSEAD; he gave me useful guidance along the way.

Q. Looking back, is there anything you'd have done differently in the application process?

Honestly, yes, having someone proofread my statements and ensure they genuinely matched what admissions committees look for would have helped. I was aware consultancies existed, including Leap Scholar, but since I'd already scored well on my GMAT, I felt confident relying on my network instead. In hindsight, that's one area where outside support could have made things smoother.

Q. How did you fund the degree?

My tuition was around £34,000, roughly 38 to 40 lakh rupees, and living costs in Coventry, which is fairly affordable, came to about £1,000 a month, another 15 lakh or so for the year. All in, it was roughly 50 lakh rupees. My parents funded the whole thing, no education loan involved.

Q. Do you think the degree has been worth it?

Genuinely, yes, and that's part of what makes the one-year format so attractive. Graduate salaries in the UK, especially in London, roughly cover what you'd spend in a single year of tuition and living costs. So even accounting for the cost of living, working for about two years on a graduate visa is generally enough to recoup the investment.

Q. Did you work part-time during your master's?

I did, at Lush Cosmetics, as a sales associate on the shop floor, starting around May, toward the end of my program, once my course load lightened. It was a genuinely great experience; Lush treats its employees really well; they even run profit-sharing bonus schemes for staff. I stayed under 20 hours a week during the term, paused entirely during my dissertation, and picked up shifts once that was done. It was flexible and honestly fun alongside university.

Q. Walk us through how you landed your current role at Chase.

I started applying in October, right after my course finished in September, since graduate programs typically recruit about a year ahead of the actual start date. Initially, I hadn't even heard of CDDP, the Chase Digital Development Programme I'm now on. I'd assumed JPMorgan was purely an investment bank with no roles outside that space, which turned out to be completely wrong. Once I found it and applied, the whole process moved quickly; I got my offer right before Christmas, and the role itself started the following July. Altogether, I tracked well over 500 applications across the search.

Q. What does your current role actually involve?

CDDP is a rotational graduate program, eight months in three different teams, which has given me exposure across genuinely different parts of the business. I previously worked in CRM, building the technology behind customer-facing issue resolution, and I'm currently on the fraud platform product team, where we build the systems that monitor and screen money transfers. My company sponsored me directly, so I never had to rely on the graduate visa route.

Q. Do you think you would have reached this point if you had stayed in India?

Honestly, no. The nature of the work itself is different here; I'm working closely with company leadership on product vision and strategic direction, which is a level of exposure that comes partly from Chase's UK operations actively expanding into other European markets right now. I don't think that kind of proximity to leadership would have been available to me at this stage of my career back in India.

Q. What does life outside work look like for you?

I travel a lot, actually; this year alone I've visited Albania, Italy, Vatican City, and Spain, taking full advantage of how close London is to the rest of Europe. Weekdays are fairly packed since I'm in the office five days a week, but weekends are for unwinding and working on personal projects.

Q. Tell us about the sustainable gifting business you started.

My partner and I launched it together, sourcing sustainable, handmade products, pens, stands, placemats, and that sort of thing, made from agricultural waste in India, and selling them here in the UK through an e-commerce platform I built myself. The idea came from noticing how sustainable gifting is often treated as something expensive or inaccessible, and we wanted to challenge that. I also do one-on-one calls with job aspirants on the side, just to give back a bit.

Q. How did your family react when you first proposed this whole plan?

They were a little skeptical at first; honestly, a Master's in Management isn't as widely recognized in India as an MS in the US, so it felt like a less certain path, and there was real concern about whether I'd secure sponsorship or a job at all. What shifted things was making the case around growth and exposure; the calibre of Warwick's faculty genuinely stood out too, some of my professors had 20 to 25 years of industry experience, and conversations with them gave a completely different perspective than anything I'd had access to before. Once I laid that out, they were fully behind it.

Q. What was landing in the UK actually like, your first time moving abroad alone?

I flew in completely alone and landed at Birmingham Airport around midday. Immigration was brutal, about two hours in line, and my SIM card had no signal, so I couldn't reach my soon-to-be flatmates until after I'd collected my luggage. Thankfully, I'd already connected with three future flatmates over WhatsApp before arriving, and we'd planned to move into shared student accommodation together. Those first few weeks, we cooked everything from home, curries, vada pav, all of it, partly just so we wouldn't miss it too much. That really helped; we became close almost immediately, like family fairly quickly.

Q. What's one thing you miss most about India?

Family and festivals especially. Ganpati's coming up soon, and I know I'll miss celebrating that with everyone back home.

Q. Do you see yourself staying in the UK long-term?

For the foreseeable future, yes, I'd say at least the next five to ten years. Immigration policy is shifting constantly, so it's hard to predict too far out, but as long as the work is good, I'm learning, and things are going well, I'm happy to keep building here.