FAILED ENTREPRENEURS GO BACK TO SCHOOL

MUMBAI: Arun Kunapareddy cofounded PasteOnMyCity in 2012. In a year, the bootstrapped activity-based localised social network could garner about 15,000 users.

Kunapareddy then decided to start up another by transforming the earlier platform to a coupon site — Kouponize. But funds were hard to come by, and about two years ago he was forced to abandon the venture. Kunapareddy, an engineer by training, is now leaving for a course at IESE Business School.

Prateet Garg co-founded a fintech venture in 2014. Thanks to the risks associated with loans, the fintech startup soon joined the long list of ventures that have not worked out.

This August, Garg, who has an accounting and finance speciality background with JP Morgan and E&Y, joins London Business School to pursue his MBA.

Like Kunapareddy and Garg, a growing number of entrepreneurs are not letting failure stop them dead. Instead, they are going back to school for global exposure and to learn how to scale and strategise.
“Failure was great as I learnt a lot to deal with it positively. Even though two of my startups failed, it gave me a keen understanding of how to start a business,” said Kunapareddy, who had also applied to Cambridge and got accepted to Oxford, HEC and IESE. “It made me clear about what skill addition I needed.”

Garg, who got through Kellogg and Yale, said he chose London Business School because of the kind of global exposure he felt it would offer. “I decided to go back to school to learn how to scale the business. It will also give me a huge amount of global exposure and network,” said Garg.

“Our interactions with admissions officers at top schools and the ensuing admits in 2017 confirm that top schools are accepting of failed entrepreneurs/entrepreneurial experience,” said Vibha Kagzi, chief education officer at admissions consultant ReachIvy.

Global schools are showing an increasing preference for such candidates, given the rich experience startups bring and the risk-taking ability one must possess to co-found/work with an early-stage company, she said.

Rajdeep Chimni, chief executive officer at Admissions Gateway, said, “An increasing number of entrepreneurs from India, who have founded one or two ventures and failed, are going back to school — to do an MBA from a top business school abroad — that will help them to learn how to scale their business.”

On their part, some top business schools like London Business School, INSEAD, HEC Paris, IESE Business School Spain, Kellogg School of Management, and Yale School of Management are welcoming promising youngsters who have tasted failure.

“Admission of failure makes it easier for a candidate to crack an MBA in a top global school,” said Jatin Bhandari, founder and CEO of PythaGurus Education.

“A person who has started and run a venture for at least two years, or raised capital, can project a lot more reality in the 100-word essay the candidates are required to write during the application process,” said Bhandari, adding that a lot of 20-somethings fail in leadership or viability of business models, but top schools are lapping them up because of the appetite for taking risk these candidates display.

Some of these candidates, who have failed in multiple ventures early on in life, also have a couple of years or more corporate experience that further adds to their depth.

“We also feel that schools lean towards candidates who have some corporate exposure with large brands under their belt in addition to startup experience, so they are ready for both eventualities,” said Kagzi.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

ReachIvy is a premium education and career advisory that helps aspiring students get accepted into top tier educational institutions globally. We have successful admits at MIT, Columbia, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, London School of Economics, University of Michigan, Oxford, University of Chicago amongst others.

Vibha Kagzi, Founder and CEO, ReachIvy, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Bachelor of Science from Carnegie Mellon University. She has also pursued courses at the University of California, Berkeley, the London School of Economics and the Indian School of Business.

Our global team of counsellors have also acquired their degrees from premier institutes and are passionate about sharing their experiences with students worldwide.