Trekking · Peak District Badminton · Swimming AI & Branding Research Food & Restaurant Exploration
6+
Cities Lived In
7
Schools & Universities
2
Countries
Education
2023 – Present
University of Sheffield
MSc Strategic Marketing & Branding
Dissertation examining AI personalisation in premium brand contexts — how escalating personalisation configurations affect perceived intrusiveness and brand trust among young UK adults. Created fictional luxury brand AURA London for the study. Mixed-methods: survey experiment + qualitative interviews.
AI & BrandingMixed MethodsConsumer Psychology
2020 – 2023
OP Jindal Global University
BA (Hons) · Sonipat, India
Transitioned from 12 years of boarding school to a critical thinking-based liberal arts environment. Achieved 92% on thesis paper. Co-founded a campus business venture. Managed tennis operations for Racket League. Part of event organisation committee.
Seven years that shaped almost everything. Elected House Captain of Meera House. Model United Nations. Core organiser for multiple major school events including Golden Moments, farewell ceremonies, and inter-house competitions. International trips: UK, US, Spain & Portugal. Badminton tournaments.
House CaptainModel United NationsInternational TripsBadminton
2008 – 2013
IVY League International School
Grades 3–5 · Hyderabad (Boarding)
First boarding school experience at age 8. Developed independence, resilience, and adaptability at a remarkably young age. Learned kung fu and karate. Discovered a love for swimming. Formed the foundations of who I became later.
Boarding SchoolKung FuSwimming
Work Experience
2024 – Present
National Trust
Part-Time · Sheffield, UK
Customer-facing role at one of the UK's most respected heritage organisations. Engaging with visitors, supporting heritage site operations alongside MSc studies.
Heritage & CultureCustomer ServiceUK
2023 – 2024
Primark
Retail Sales Assistant · Sheffield, UK
First UK work experience. High-volume retail floor management, stock operations, and customer service in one of Sheffield's busiest high-street stores. Practical consumer behaviour experience that no module can replicate.
RetailFirst UK Role
2022 – 2023
SreeIndirakshini Enterprises
Assistant Project Manager (APM) · Hyderabad, India
Supported delivery of the Sri Indi Rakshini renovation project end-to-end — coordinating contractors, tracking timelines, and managing on-site logistics. The role where a genuine, lasting interest in project management was discovered.
Assistant Project ManagerRenovation Leadership
2021 – 2023
Adsiduous
Hyderabad, India
Second professional role, run alongside the APM position above.
Hyderabad
2021 – 2022
Mudrantar
Hyderabad, India
First professional role post-graduation. Foundational corporate experience. First time managing professional responsibilities independently outside an academic setting.
First Corporate RoleHyderabad
Key Achievements
Leadership
House Captain — Meera House, JIRS
Elected captain overseeing inter-house sports events, competitions, and school activities in final year at Jain International.
Academic
Thesis Score: 92% — OP Jindal
Highest personal academic achievement. Proof that the environment matters as much as the student.
MUN
Model United Nations — JIRS
Took part in Model United Nations at Jain International. Coordinated a large-scale student event and inter-school diplomacy simulations.
Entrepreneurship
Campus Business — OP Jindal
Co-founded and operated a profitable business within the university campus. Generated real income with close friends in an academic setting.
Research & Projects
The Work
Consumer Psychology · Mixed Methods · 2023
Why We Buy What We Don't Need
Surveyed and interviewed 100+ students to find out what actually drives a luxury purchase. The honest answer wasn't status — and that's what made it worth writing up.
Read the case study →
Retail Marketing · Primary Research · Sheffield · 2026
The Instagram Gap
Diagnosed why Sheffield's last independent department store can't reach its next generation of customers — through 118 posts, two floor interviews, and one very telling follower count.
Read the case study →
AI & Branding · MSc Dissertation · In Progress
The Dark Side of AI Personalisation
Currently researching how escalating AI personalisation affects brand trust among young UK adults. Coming September 2026.
Coming Soon
Consumer Psychology · Mixed Methods · OP Jindal · 2023
Why We Buy What We Don't Need
A study into what actually drives an 18–23 year old to spend on luxury goods — and what most marketers get wrong about it.
The Question
Luxury spending among young adults has exploded — the global market went from $20 billion in 1985 to over $240 billion within three decades, and students are an increasingly large part of that curve. I wanted to know what's actually driving it. Status? Self-image? Culture? Or something quieter that marketers keep missing?
The Approach
I didn't want opinions. I wanted patterns — so I built a mixed-methods study that could catch both.
77
Survey Respondents (18–23)
20+
In-Depth Interviews
3
Forces Tested
4
Hypotheses
Every question mapped to one of three forces: what satisfies me (intrinsic), what impresses others (extrinsic), or what my culture taught me to value (cultural). Surveys find the pattern. Interviews explain it. I needed both, because people are more honest in conversation than in a form.
A Question of Method
"Surveys find the pattern. Interviews explain it."
What I Found
Three forces, three charts. Here's how each one actually performed.
"Intrinsic factors won decisively. Extrinsic factors mattered, but far less consistently — responses split almost evenly across agree, neutral, and disagree. Cultural factors were the most divided of all."
Quality and indulgence won, decisively. Roughly 7 in 10 respondents said a product's craftsmanship and the feeling it gave them mattered more than anything else about it.
Status still matters — just less decisively than assumed. Responses split almost evenly across agree, neutral, and disagree, meaning extrinsic motivators exist, but they're nowhere near universal.
The most surprising result. When asked directly, most people shrugged — a plurality said culture doesn't consciously factor in. But the interviews told a different story.
The Nuance
Two things stood out once I looked past the topline numbers.
People don't know their own reasons, or won't say them. When asked directly whether their cultural background influences their purchases, 67% agreed — the highest agreement score in the entire study. But ask about the specific mechanisms — tradition, values, perceived worth — and responses turn neutral and mixed. People affirm culture's influence in the abstract but can't quite explain how. The same gap showed up between survey and interview responses on status: most survey respondents downplayed how much financial success motivated them, but in interviews — where nobody was ticking a box — plenty admitted status played a real role. Surveys measure what people are willing to admit. Interviews get closer to what's actually true.
Gender is a real, measurable split. Women leaned meaningfully more toward intrinsic and cultural motivators than men did; both genders were equally swayed by status and exclusivity. That tracks with existing research (Kacen & Lee, 2002; Mangleburg et al., 2004), but it was still striking to see it show up this clearly in a sample this size.
What People Say vs. What's True
"Surveys measure what people are willing to admit."
Why It Matters
This wasn't just an academic exercise. It's the same question every premium brand has to answer: are you selling craftsmanship, or are you selling status? My data says most young buyers will tell you it's craftsmanship — but scratch beneath the surface and status is still quietly doing a lot of the work. That gap between what people say and what actually drives them is exactly the kind of thing I want to keep researching. It's part of why my current MSc dissertation looks at AI personalisation and brand trust — same underlying question, different mechanism.
Still Asking Questions
"Same underlying question. Different mechanism."
Limitations
Single university, self-selected sample, and a survey size too small to catch finer differences between groups. I'd want a larger, more diverse sample to make any of this conclusive — but as a first pass into what actually drives a luxury purchase, it did its job.
Retail Marketing · Primary Research · Sheffield · 2026
The Instagram Gap
Diagnosing why Sheffield's last independent department store can't reach its next generation of customers.
The Question
Atkinsons wants to reach 18–35 year olds. Instagram is the one channel that age group actually lives on. And it's the weakest channel the brand has. I wanted to know exactly why — and what a 180-year-old department store could realistically do about it without a marketing budget to match Selfridges.
The Approach
Not a guess. A proper audit — the shop floor, the grid, and a direct competitor, side by side.
2
Floor Interviews Conducted
118
Instagram Posts Audited
110
Day Observation Window
1
Direct Competitor Benchmarked
Two conversations on the shop floor told me what customers actually want. A systematic audit of 118 posts told me what Atkinsons is actually giving them. Benchmarking against Bakers & Larners — a comparable independent — told me whether the gap was about effort or about strategy.
Where Physical Retail Meets the Scroll
"A 180-year-old shop counter. A phone face-down beside it. That's the whole problem in one frame."
What I Found
Three numbers tell the whole story.
"Atkinsons isn't failing to post. It's posting the wrong thing, to the wrong platform, at a fraction of a comparable competitor's reach."
78% of all content is product showcases or discount announcements. Almost nothing else gets posted.
Facebook has 6.5× the following Instagram does — despite receiving the same content, posted at the same time.
Atkinsons holds roughly 28% of a comparable independent retailer's follower base, at a similar posting frequency. This isn't an effort gap — it's a strategy gap.
The Nuance
The real problem isn't visible until you apply a proper framework to it.
Using Muntinga, Moorman & Smit's COBRA engagement model, Atkinsons' Instagram presence sits entirely at the bottom rung — Consuming. Every post is firm-created, top-down, and built for scrolling past. There is zero user-generated content. Zero tagged customer photos. Zero reason for a follower to do anything but keep scrolling. Schivinski & Dabrowski's research is unambiguous on this point: user-generated content builds brand equity in a way firm-created content structurally cannot. Atkinsons doesn't have a visibility problem. It has a participation problem.
Why It Matters
This isn't really about Instagram. It's about whether a 180-year-old independent retailer can build a relationship with a generation that has never once walked past its shop window and thought about it. The answer isn't a bigger budget — it's a phased, deliberately sequenced plan that starts with zero new spend.
Limitations
Two personally-conducted interviews, part of a broader 11-interview group study — not a large enough sample to generalise from alone. One competitor benchmarked, not a full market analysis. These are recommendations, not yet tested outcomes.
The Route
A Life in Motion
6
01
Hindupur
Born 2001 · Home Base
Where it all started, and where I'm from. My parents are here. Michael lives here. Every other city is where I've been — this one is home.
02
Hyderabad
2008 · 2021–2023
IVY League boarding school at 8 years old. Then the Hyderabad years — best nights, best people, and the first taste of a life that actually felt like mine.
03
Bangalore
2013 – 2020 · 7 Years
Jain International. Seven years that shaped almost everything — friendships, discipline, international trips, all of it.
04
Sonipat
2020 – 2023
OP Jindal Global University. Met the people I now call family. Built something together on campus. Wrote a thesis that actually meant something.
05
Sheffield ✦
2023 – Present
MSc. Dissertation. Peak District. Grey skies. Warm people. The chapter still being written.
The Full Story
Chapter by Chapter
4
Chapter One
Too Young to Understand, Old Enough to Remember
IVY League · Hyderabad · 2008–2013
Eight years old, away from home for the first time, and absolutely certain it was the end of the world. It wasn't.
Read the full chapter →
Chapter Two
Seven Years That Built Me
Jain International · Bangalore · 2013–2020
House Captain, Model United Nations, and the years that made me who I am.
Read the full chapter →
Chapter Three
First Taste of Real Life
OP Jindal + Hyderabad · 2020–2023
University, my first job, my first car, and the renovation project that taught me I actually love project management.
Read the full chapter →
Chapter Four — Now
The Build · Sheffield
Sheffield, UK · 2023–Present
A new country, a new city, a dissertation, and a slow, deliberate attempt to build something that lasts.
Read the full chapter →
Chapter One
Too Young to Understand, Old Enough to Remember
IVY League · Hyderabad · 2008–2013
I was eight years old the first time I was sent away to boarding school. I cried more than I'd like to admit, for longer than I'd like to admit. Hyderabad felt impossibly far from Hindupur, even though it wasn't.
But somewhere in those five years, the homesickness turned into something else. I made friends I still think about. I learned how to be on my own without feeling alone. By the end of it, I wasn't the boy who cried anymore — I was someone who could land anywhere and figure it out. That skill turned out to matter more than almost anything else I learned in a classroom.
Chapter Two
Seven Years That Built Me
Jain International · Bangalore · 2013–2020
Seven years at Jain International is the longest I've stayed anywhere. It shaped almost everything — elected House Captain of Meera House, Model United Nations, core organiser of Golden Moments and multiple farewell ceremonies, badminton tournaments, school trips to the UK, US, Spain and Portugal.
The version of me that exists today was built in those seven years — the leadership, the discipline, and the friendships that became family.
Chapter Three
First Taste of Real Life
OP Jindal + Hyderabad · 2020–2023
University was a different kind of education — critical thinking instead of rote learning, and a campus business venture I co-founded with friends.
Alongside that came my first jobs in Hyderabad — Mudrantar, then Adsiduous, and the role that actually changed my direction: Assistant Project Manager on the Sri Indi Rakshini renovation project. Coordinating contractors and timelines on a live site taught me more about real-world execution than any lecture. That's where I learned I genuinely love project management.
Chapter Four — Now
The Build · Sheffield
Sheffield, UK · 2023–Present
Sheffield is where I am now — MSc Strategic Marketing & Branding, a dissertation on AI personalisation, and a part-time job at the National Trust to keep things grounded. Missing Michael from six thousand miles away has been the hardest part.
Here's the city, through my eyes:
🏙️
The City
Warm in a way that sneaks up on you. Doesn't try too hard. Honest in a way most cities aren't.
🌳
The Parks
Enormous. Everywhere. The kind of parks where you forget you're in a city. Right next to the Peak District.
🥾
Peak District
Always wanted to get into serious trekking. Sheffield gave me that. Been multiple times and it never gets old.
👥
The People
Not London politeness-as-performance. Actual warmth. Took me by surprise. Still does sometimes.
🎓
University
Nobody told me a dissertation was a full-time job with no salary. The work is genuinely interesting though.
🍜
The Food
The spots you stumble into are better than the ones on every list. Trust the side streets.
Nobody Asked
Unsolicited Opinions
Boarding School
"Sending a child to boarding school at 8 is either the best or worst thing a parent can do. For me it ended up being both."
I cried for a full year. Then I learned kung fu, swam every week, ate Aloo Paratha every morning, and started building the ability to exist anywhere. I wouldn't trade it — but I also wouldn't do it to my kid.
Sheffield
"Sheffield has no marketing department and it shows. It also doesn't need one."
The city is good precisely because it doesn't know it's good. The moment it becomes self-aware about it, something will be lost.
Work
"Three months in retail teaches you more about human psychology than any consumer behaviour module."
A shop floor is a live case study that never ends. Everyone studying marketing should have to do a semester of it. No exceptions.
Friendship
"The people you meet at 19 and still talk to at 24 are not friends. They are family."
The Jindal group. The Hyderabad crew. These aren't social connections — they're the people who'd pick up at 3am and they know I would too.
Growth
"If I'm the smartest person in the room, I'm probably in the wrong room."
I try to stay the least accomplished person in the spaces I'm in. Being the most capable is comfortable — and comfort is exactly where growth quietly stops. So I keep looking for rooms full of people better than me, and I don't find that threatening. I find it useful.
Relationships
"I'd rather be remembered as a good friend than a successful person."
Success is easy to measure. Being genuinely present for people is harder. I don't always get it right. But it's the thing I care most about getting better at.
The Long Game
"The question isn't what I want right now — it's what future Monish will thank me for."
I try to think ten steps ahead. I believe the first years of adult life are for building the foundation, not resting on one.
Pain
"Pain is part of the deal, not a sign something's gone wrong."
There's a line from a film I can't place anymore — if you pray for bravery, does God give you bravery, or the opportunity to be brave? Most of what we call character is just that: opportunities we either take or don't.
The People Behind Everything
Naveen & Tulasi.
Naveen Nischal
Father · Hindupur
"The hardest working person I know. Every city, every school, every flight — all of it traces back to him making it possible. I don't say it enough."
Tulasi
Mother · Hindupur
"She came and stayed in Hyderabad to help me study when I was failing everything. That's not something you forget. The most unconditional love I've ever known."
Inheritance
What They Built
My Father
The Survivor
I come from a family that never got anything simply. Every member of it has worked hard, faced real challenges, and kept fighting anyway. That's why I call my father a survivor — not as a figure of speech, but because I've watched him earn that word over and over. He never framed it as resilience. He just kept going. That's the lesson I took from him: not how to succeed, but how to continue.
My Mother
Showing Up
When I was struggling academically, she moved cities to help me. She just did it. That's the version of love I grew up with — not words, but presence. The people who show up when things are difficult are the ones that actually matter.
Boarding School
A Hard Decision That Was Right
I was lucky my parents made the hard decision to send me to boarding school, even though I hated it at first. Looking back, it's what made me who I am — adaptable, independent, comfortable being away from home. Home stopped being a place. It became something I carried with me.
The Main Character
Michael.
🐾
Michael.
Golden Retriever · 5 Years Old
Born Nova. Renamed Michael because nobody could say it right — which, honestly, suits him. He's been through hip dysplasia and skin issues and handled both with more grace than I handle a bad day. Lives with my parents in Hindupur now. Keeps them company. That's the most important job he'll ever have, and he doesn't even know it.
Original Name
Nova
Current Base
Hindupur, India
Health Journey
Hip dysplasia · Skin issues
Main Role
Chief parent companion 👑
Father
Naveen Nischal
Father · Hindupur, India
The hardest working person I know. Every city I've lived in, every school I've attended, every flight I've taken — all of it traces back to him making it possible, year after year, without ever making a show of it.
He's the reason I call myself someone who has struggled and come out the other side, rather than someone for whom things came easily. I watched him face real difficulty and keep going regardless. That's not a lesson he ever sat me down to teach — I just absorbed it from watching him live it.
Mother
Tulasi
Mother · Hindupur, India
In her own words:
"This is about my son Monish. Everyone in our house used to pamper Chintu. Chintu is no one else, it's the pet name given by his grandmother. The sad thing in Chintu's childhood is that I joined him in a hostel in the fourth class itself. He used to cry a lot. That pain also turned into anger toward me. Like that, his school days and college days passed by in the hostel itself. By staying in the hostel, he learned a lot. That is… kindness, helping, and giving respect to elders. He learned a lot like this. He also learned about money savings. But the minus point he has is… anger, and the stubbornness within that anger. However, that would only be up to a certain extent, and it remains so. Because he is also a good human being. Along with that, he is very reserved. He talks very little."
That's not something I'll ever forget. The most unconditional love I've ever known.
Before I'm Done
The Bucket List
01
Move to another country alone
Sheffield counts. Done.
Life
02
Climb Mount Everest
Not Base Camp. The actual thing. Probably insane. Absolutely going to try.
Adventure
03
See the Northern Lights
Iceland specifically. Not Norway. Iceland.
Travel
04
Build a personal library
A real collection of books. Physical. Shelved properly.
Collection
05
Build a farmhouse
Somewhere quiet. Land, space, Michael running around in the garden.
Build
06
Become the person future me is counting on
Most decisions I make now are for a version of me that doesn't exist yet. Trying to make sure he's grateful.
Based in Sheffield — always up for a conversation about marketing, branding, or anything else.
✦ You Found The Other Side ✦
The Real Monish.
No CV language. No carefully chosen words. Just what actually happened and what I actually think about it.
🤫
Things I Actually Think
The version of my opinions that didn't make the professional side. Unedited. No audience considered.
📸
The Real Photo Album
Trips, nights, moments that weren't about anything except being alive and having a good time.
😤
Suspended 3 Times
All three at Jain. All three for things I'd probably do again. The school taught me a lot. Some of it was the suspensions.
💛
The Jindal Years
University, the friend group that became family, and the trips that I still bring up at every reunion.
Unfiltered
The Real Ones
001
"I convinced myself in third grade that boarding school was a dream and I would wake up at home. I did that for weeks. It was the only way to get through the nights."
002
"The Hyderabad years weren't about what I earned. They were about the midnight drives that turned into sunrise conversations, the plans made at 1am and followed through by 6am, the flat parties that ended on rooftops with nobody willing to call it a night. I had a life that most people spend their twenties chasing. I walked away from it on purpose. Some days I'm proud of that. Some days I'm not sure."
003
"I got suspended three times at Jain. Every time for something completely avoidable. Every time absolutely worth it."
004
"When Covid hit and school closed, I wasted months. I knew I was wasting them while it was happening. I watched series and played PS and told myself it was fine. I still think about those months."
005
"The hardest part of Sheffield isn't the dissertation. It's knowing Michael is in Hindupur and I'm not there. He's 5 and he's been through a lot and I should be there more."
006
"My parents put me in boarding school at 8 because they believed in a future they couldn't fully see yet. I hated them for it at the time. I'm grateful every single day now."
007
"I still miss Aloo Paratha and black forest cake from IVY League. I'm 24 and a boarding school canteen still lives rent-free in my head."
Jain International
JIRS Files
Suspension #1
The Midnight Escape
Climbing out after lights-out to meet friends from another house. Got caught on the way back in. Worth every second of it.
Suspension #2
The One With The Roof
A group of us ended up somewhere we definitely weren't supposed to be, doing something we definitely weren't supposed to do. Got caught. Still laugh about it with the same people today.
Suspension #3
The One I Still Won't Fully Explain
Some stories are better told in person over a drink, not written down on a website. This is one of them. None of us regret it.
OP Jindal
Jindal Files
The Friend Group
The Best Part of University, By Far
University was genuinely one of the most fun periods of my life, mostly because of the people I found there. We laughed more than I can put into words. We had an unspoken rule that no plan was too last-minute — someone would say "let's go to Rajasthan" on a Wednesday and by Friday we'd actually be there.
The Trips
Rajasthan, Shimla, Goa, Kasol
We went everywhere we could afford and some places we probably couldn't. Rajasthan for the chaos of it, Shimla for the cold and the views, Goa because everyone has to go to Goa at least once with the right people, Kasol for the kind of trip that doesn't really need a reason. Every single one of these trips had its own legendary stories — some I can tell, plenty I genuinely can't put on a website. We did a lot of things. I'll leave it there.
Campus Life
The Business, The Late Nights, All Of It
Co-founded a small venture on campus with the same crew. Made actual money, lost some of it too, learned more from both than any classroom could teach. Most of my best memories from those years didn't happen in a lecture hall.
A Person, Not a Footnote
Miloni
Miloni wasn't just someone I dated. She was the person I called first, the one who knew what I was thinking before I said it, and the only person who could make a bad day feel manageable just by being there.
What I remember most is how safe everything felt around her. She had this way of being calm when I wasn't, patient when I didn't deserve it, and present in a way that most people never learn how to be. She forgave me more times than she should have, and I love her more than I ever properly told her.
She's still my best friend. She still matters to me in a way I don't fully have the words for, and I don't think that's ever going to change. Some people come into your life and just stay — not because they have to, but because whatever you built together was too real to walk away from. That's Miloni.
The Real Album
Actually Living
Spain 🇪🇸
Good times 🔥
US Trip 🇺🇸
Living
Spain again 🌞
New York 🗽
Trips with the crew
Memories
Portugal 🇵🇹
Want a tour of my world?
I'll walk you through the CV, the cities, the chapters, Michael, my parents, and everything else. Takes about a minute.
M. Naidu
FR 01 · Sheffield
