Kaustuv Nag
Current Employer/Organisation Name
Southern Water
What have you been doing since leaving Exeter, and what are you doing now?
I was very excited to work in the public utilities sector especially in water, something which I have researched on before in India, and it was very exciting to get into the nuances of asset strategy, data and governance. My job is to calculate water consumption and headroom on the quant side and lobby for governance policies from the performance reporting side. I am still doing it now one and a half years later, but now I at least have some idea as to what I am doing!
Why did you choose this career? And what do you enjoy most about your work?
Water is going to be a very precious commodity of the future since we don’t have enough of it to meet our demand. Modern technologies like AI and increased public usage will continue to put massive pressure on the system. We need to build enough resources so that humanity continues to thrive. I think there is absolutely nothing more exciting than leaving a better world for your future generations.
The most exciting part of my job is having autonomy. The scope of improvement in process, and in value chain is massive with new quantitative models in place and we can make proactive predictions or preparative scenarios for both human behaviour and the asset itself. I get to build charts, feed models, and try to connect the dots. Prepare a hypothesis and then lobby to test it, then check the data to see if our models worked.
Please tell us if you were a member of any societies, groups or sports clubs?
Society: Business and Finance Society.
Group: Student Guild, Green Consulting, Exe Consulting
Sports Club: High-performance single seater karting
What did you enjoy most about your programme and what was the biggest highlight?
I enjoyed bits and pieces of everything. But it was definitely the people. Friends, colleagues, study parters, work friends.
It was the leadership trip to Ambercombe (I may be recollecting the name wrong) where we had some very nice reflective sessions and got to see an amazing estate and yurts. It has to be the biggest highlight.
What did you most enjoy about studying here?
The campus and the quintessential university feeling. Professors were accessible and so were all the groups and societies. There was a feeling of endless possibilities which kept me on my toes.
Why did you choose to study at Exeter?
Exeter gave me the most scholarship and the value for money was very high for me in terms of professor quality, campus, student resources, city of dwellings, etc.
What skills and experiences have been most useful for your career?
Technical Skills: Excel and Power Bi.
Personal Skills: Communication and storytelling
Mental Skills: Discipline
What advice would you give to a current student who wishes to pursue your career?
Keep learning. A piece of paper can’t prove if you are good at it or not. You can learn and do anything in this world. You just need to keep doing it.
What are your plans for the future?
Learn flying. I have been holding it off for too long.
