Interview Abhinav Kotak – alumnus of the class 2017 sponsored by Givaudan
“Namaste! I am Abhinav Kotak from Gujarat, India. I am a Management Graduate and received my formal training in perfumery at GIP in the year 2017. I am currently working as a Perfumer at Abhinav Perfumers, which is my family owned company. We manufacture Industrial fragrances and Raw Incense Sticks.”
“Currently I am working on multiple Incense Stick Fragrances and an Oriental Fine Fragrance to name a few.”
“Thinking about my career 5 years down the line, I see myself developing fragrances for varied applications and at the same time focusing on the sales and marketing of products. I always want to be active both creatively and in the commercial world.”
“It was my dream to be a part of GIP ever since I graduated. I got to know about it from a colleague who is also a GIP Alumni. I always felt the need to be trained formally in perfumery before joining the business. You can have your own working method and personal techniques on how to go about creating a fragrance but not without knowing the very basics of this wonderful art. GIP gives you the best training from the very first day starting from the raw materials, to the accords, application, chemistry and what not. Talking about the professional benefits, I came with an open mind and always wanted to learn as much as I could from the professors and personal experience. I must say, smelling the raw materials is the most integral part of GIP for me. Everything follows if you know your ingredients thoroughly. Grasse as a town gives you so much to learn, specifically for someone like me who comes from such a densely populated country. Grasse and GIP gave me a life changing year in every sense. On a lighter note I met my wife at GIP, so nothing better than that!”
“The only advice I would like to share is spend as much time learning at school as you can. Life post school will be very different and one will never get so much time to learn the raw materials, fine fragrances and explore them fully. Given a chance again, I would definitely try to explore GIP library, which I hardly ever did. The year is intense and can take a toll on you but it is very important to stay calm and learn from your colleagues. GIP gives you the platform to interact and study with individuals belonging to diverse nationalities and I feel that is one of the best thing about it. One ingredient or one fragrance can have 12 different impressions depending upon where an individual comes from. This makes it super rich in terms of your learning and experience. Share your impressions, knowledge and grow together!”
Write a comment