NYU Stern MBA – New York University grad turns Entrepreneur in India

The NYU Stern MBA program at New York University might be known as one of the best Finance programs in the world. And being located in the commercial capital gives it a huge advantage – career opportunities in the financial services industry with investment banks doling out the best salaries and bonuses in the business.
But NYU Stern has other strengths too, that generally get overshadowed by the ‘Finance MBA‘ label.

Anubhav Jain completed his MBA from NYU Stern. But the New York glitter and glamour didn’t hold him back. He returned back to start his own company in India. Read how NYU turned him into an entrepreneur.

How the NYU Stern MBA helped me become an entrepreneur

I did my B.Tech from IT BHU in Ceramic Engineering followed by MS in Materials Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. While at school, I did my internship with Praxair and after graduation, was offered a full time position. I started my career in R&D and then moved into managing a manufacturing unit. My career was going great but after I while I wanted to move back to India and also had a feeling that I want to do something else. With my experience I felt I only had limited options to choose from unless someone gives me a break. I started thinking what it would be like to start something on my own but didn’t have any mentor so felt lost.

At this time I decided to go for an MBA as it would have helped me in expanding my scope and learn things which would have been difficult or would have taken a longer time had I decided to move up the corporate ladder. I chose US school over one in India after discussions with alums from both sides. I ended up at Stern for my MBA because the school offered a perfect mix of aspects I was looking for in terms of academia and opportunities.

I was interested in corporate strategy and finance and primarily took courses that were more focused on hard skills e.g.” fixed income” rather than “leadership”. What one does at b-school depends entirely on what he or she wants to achieve out of it. The amount of information and exposure I got while at NYU Stern was incredible. If I wanted to know more about any career option, I was able to meet up with people in the field and get a real life feel of the details.

After MBA I came back to India and joined Bristol Myers Squibb in market research. However, I ended up doing anything and everything that varied from short and long term planning, budgeting, forecasting etc. to obviously market research and competitive intelligence. I was enjoying the opportunity but at the same time had the same feeling (to start something of my own) as in my previous role. After a lot of introspection I could figure out that I need to take some risk, so I finally decided to quit my job and do something on my own.

I explored various ideas but decided to stick with what I knew the best i.e. in the field of materials. I joined hands with my friend, Abhijeet Dwivedi, from IT-BHU and started Samics Research Materials. Samics is the first advanced materials company in India and at the time of writing this blog is a few weeks away from production. Samics will manufacture high to ultra high purity i.e. >99.9% single and multi component oxides for various high tech applications such as fuel cells, thermal barrier coatings etc. Please visit www.samics.com for more details.

I am sure I would not have done this but for my MBA from NYU Stern. Besides learning a lot in finance, accounting, marketing, strategy etc. the one thing I gained that made all the difference was self belief and confidence. It is this faith in self that gives you the strength to break the norm and jump into unknown. Most of us who want to go for entrepreneurship wait for the next big idea like Google, Facebook etc. but forget that it took quite some time for these companies to get the limelight. You will only know the true worth of an idea if you actually do more than just thinking about it.

There are certain things that I would strongly suggest if you are thinking of an MBA. I learnt that most top schools are similar as far as the job opportunities are considered. So if the prime objective is getting a nice job, you won’t go wrong with any top 15 schools. Whether the economy is good or bad you will end up almost in the same situation since your background, interest and zeal to do something decides your fate; school is statistically speaking irrelevant.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you need any help or advice.

If you have questions for Anubhav about the program, post them on the NYU Stern MBA forum.

Also read how this student made it into NYU Stern School of Business with $60,000 scholarship in Round 3