Masters Union School of Business: 5 reasons why its MBA program is quite unique

 

Hey guys, when you want to go for the 1 year MBA in India i.e. after substantive work-ex, you generally have to make a choice between IIM A/B/C and ISB. Now I came across this 16 month program by Masters' Union. Post Graduate Programme in Technology and Business Management – PGP - TBM Graduates & Students enrolled in their final year of graduation or Mid-career professionals (0-5 years of work experience) are eligible. Only 17% of the batch is Engineers, unlike a typical MBA program in India, which is the bastion of the GEM – General Engineering Male. Applicants need to have a valid GMAT, GRE, CAT or NMAT score. The admission panel may consider waiving it off under exceptional circumstances. Here are 5 reasons why I think you can have a serious look at this program 1) CXO-led B-school 21 ‘masters’ — CXOs, MDs, eminent public leaders, and even MPs like Shashi Tharoor. Faculty has experience with hands-on leadership in the industry. So it has amongst its faculty, the likes of Arun Maira, (Former Chairman, BCG and a Mukund Rajan (Former MD, TTSL) Imagine a Naveen Munjal, MD Hero Electric Vehicles who takes a class on “The future of Electric Vehicles”. I would love to go back to my MBA with this kind of faculty. It’s an amalgam of theory and practical 2) Pedagogy 8 terms of weeks each Look at their brochure – Page 5 and see how a typical week looks like, from morning 9 AM to evening 10 PM= completely action packed. Core class, Area Class, Leadership Lectures, Business Tours, Consulting Projects – with clients like Facebook and Unilever, an AT Kearney and a JM Financial, Boot camp-style tech courses, online hackathons, business tours, networking dinners etc. It’s like you are studying medical in a hospitals where doctors teach you to treat patients, diagnose cases etc. You can assist Company CXOs as their EAs. 120 companies is the pool they have. 3) Investment Fund, Center For New Business Models and Startup School Which B-school gives its students 5 crores to get hands on experience in managing a mini hedge - fund. Blockchain, Applied Machine Learning, Genetics and Biotech, and Agriculture and Food Innovation – normally it’s not found in other B-schools. And since these are super niche fields; say if you build a business based on these concepts, you get a unique competitive moat. Entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) mentoring – this is also available in say an IIM or ISB but is certainly a good thing. 4) Fees If you compare the fee, it’s 20 lacs for the course incl. GST plus the say 3.5 lacs for shared accommodation and meal plans. PGPX at IIMA is 28 lacs plus cost of International Immersion Programme (IIP). ISB for shared accommodation would also be 36 lacs+1.5 lacs = 37.5 lacs. Remember this is for 16 months as compared to 12 months. So, quite reasonable from a cost standpoint. 5) Placements It’s their first batch, Class of 2021 with 60 students. So we don’t have data points on Mean and Median. But In all probability, I see no reason for worry there If they are bringing such faculty, for sure they have super corporate connects. They already have competitions on campus from Aditya Birla Group, Ola, Hero and HUL So I am draw a parallel with Rajat Gupta and Anil Kumar setting up ISB and making it a super successful course so soon. Cybergram, Gurgaon as a location is also a great advantage as company HRs won’t have to travel separately to attend your campus placements. Summing Up Of course, sometimes in life you have to take calculated risks and this could be a good one. The lead indicators seem to suggest a bright future here.