SAKET SUMAN

““Jack of all trades, master of none.”

Johar to all. My name is Saket Suman.

This line is often spoken as a quiet dismissal, a way to measure someone against the narrow yardstick of specialization. Yet to me, it has always carried a different weight—one that is not diminishing, but deeply affirming. It reflects not a lack of mastery, but a refusal to be confined; not an absence of depth, but the presence of breadth that allows one to see the invisible connections others overlook.

In many ways, it mirrors the true nature of my work.

I currently serve as a Cost Controller at MindEscapes, and before this, I have been part of a few award-winning fine-dining hospitality chains. On the surface, the role appears numerical—rooted in ledgers, percentages, and variance reports. But in practice, it is far more intricate. It demands a working fluency in finance, an operational instinct, an understanding of market behavior, and even a sensitivity to human dynamics. It is less about controlling cost, and more about understanding the anatomy of a business—where it breathes efficiently, and where it quietly bleeds.

There is, admittedly, very little recognition in this line of work. Success is silent and expected; failure, however small, is amplified. The role is accompanied by internal resistance, long and irregular hours, the monotony of repetition, ethical grey zones, volatile vendor ecosystems, and the daily friction of aligning multiple interests that rarely move in harmony. It is a space where one is constantly negotiating between numbers and narratives, between what should be and what is.

To be a cost controller, then, is not merely to be comfortable with numbers. It is to engage in a continuous act of refinement—to question inefficiencies, to optimize systems, and to push an operation closer to its most disciplined form. It is to translate chaos into structure, and intuition into measurable outcomes.

And yet, over time, I have come to realize that the idea of “cost” itself is far more expansive than what appears on a balance sheet. The true cost of anything is rarely just monetary—it is often measured in time, in effort, in trade-offs, and occasionally, in pieces of one’s own life. Numbers, in that sense, are only the surface; the deeper truth lies beneath them.

If I am to be candid, this was not the path I had originally envisioned for myself. I was drawn toward becoming a business analyst, and eventually, an entrepreneur—someone who builds, questions, and creates rather than merely measures. Yet, in an unexpected way, this role has become my foundation. It has trained me to see businesses not as abstract ideas, but as living systems governed by discipline, constraints, and consequence.

Perhaps that is why I continue.

Because this journey, though not chosen at the outset, is shaping the way I think, decide, and perceive value. It is teaching me that before one can build something meaningful, one must first understand what sustains it—and what silently erodes it.

So if being a “jack of all trades” means standing at the intersection of multiple disciplines, absorbing their nuances, and learning to see the whole rather than just its parts, then I accept the title without hesitation.

For in the long run, it is not the narrow mastery of one domain, but the integrated understanding of many, that prepares a person not just to perform—but to create, to lead, and ultimately, to build something of their own.”