THE DISRUPTORS

NEW-AGE B-SCHOOLS ARE UPPING THE ANTE ON TRADITIONAL IIMs WITH THEIR PRACTICAL AND HANDS-ON APPROACH.

- BY AJITA SHASHIDHAR

IMAGINE AMAN GUPTA (BOAT), Deepinder Goyal (Zomato) or Abhiraj Singh Bhal (Urban Company)—the poster boys of the startup world—coming to your campus not for a one-off guest lecture, but to teach you the intricacies of managing supply chain in quick commerce, or how to come up with differentiated marketing strategies for multiple cohorts of consumers, for an entire semester! For Tanay Agarwal, it was a no-brainer to enrol himself in the one-year MBA in Start-Up Management programme of the Mesa School of Business, Bengaluru, which promised to get him mentored by startup founders.

It had always been Tanay's dream to run a startup and soon after finishing his undergrad course, he thought the best way to learn the ropes would be to work in startups. He spent a year with CRED and Kristal.AI, before joining Mesa. Not only was he taught by the likes of Vidit Atrey (Meesho), Kunal Shah (CRED) and Bhal (Urban Company), Tanay and fellow co-founder Jash Arora (a classmate) incubated Mumbai Pav Co. at the school's startup lab. Today, Mumbai Pav Co. is already a year old and has five stores in Bengaluru. “Some of my industry mentors at the Mesa School also invested in my business,” says Tanay.

Up north, in Gurugram, Archit Bhargava always wanted to be a part of a venture fund. He had worked with brokerages and consulting firms, until he joined the PGP in Tech and Business Management course at Masters' Union, Gurugram. It was Archit's dream come true to be mentored by stalwarts of the venture capital world, including Saksham Kotiya of DSG Consumer Partners and Shishir Maheshwari of Eversource Capital. A practical experiment followed when he was assigned to lead the student-managed Masters Union Investment Fund. Today, Archit is part of the investment team of Avaana Capital, and his intent is to have his own venture firm someday.