Written by Sameer Kamat

It’s a common topic for group discussions and MBA interviews. ‘Entrepreneurs are born not made. Discuss.’ says the moderator and the shortlisted candidates (who’ve never had any exposure to entrepreneurship) take off on a passionate and agressive spiel. If you’ve ever see the MTV Roadies audition rounds, you can visualise what’s happening.
Unfortunately, the evaluation process encourages and incentivises applicants to take a clear (often, black or white) stand. Even more ironic is the fact that these guys who are fighting hard to make a point will never take up entrepreneurship after they complete their MBA. Read this post –> MBA Entrepreneurs: Why many bschool grads may never launch a startup.
So we thought it might help to know the views of someone who has been a successful entrepreneur for a long time. Cambridge MBA and entrepreneur Neeraj Agarwal (who first got a dhamakedaar introduction on our blog here –> Please come back to India. Your country needs you) is back. In this new series on entrepreneurship and startups, he will share his experience and knowledge with aspiring entrepreneurs.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Technology entrepreneurship in India is common. Serial entrepreneurship is less common. Women entrepreneurs in technology are a rare breed. So what’s the rarest of rare breed? Combine industry, role, gender and nationality to get the answer.
Answer: Women entrepreneurs in India who have managed the fine art of serial entrepreneurship in the technology space.
We love to hear stories about folks who break the stereotypical moulds. Speaking of women entrepreneurs in India, Sonia Soman from Pune is one such role model who sets an example for many aspiring technology entrepreneurs who dream of launching not just one, but multiple technology start-ups.

Several Indian technology professionals with brilliant tech skills & amazing startup ideas put their plans on the backburner and head off to the best bschools to learn about technology, entrepreneurship & business plans. Sonia decided to take the shorter route and jump in without any formal management education.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Here’s an intriguing phenomenon. We have seen the same trend in applicants who work with us on the MBA Mock Application Process (MBA MAP). A significant number of MBA applicants explicitly list entrepreneurship as a post MBA goal in their admission essays.

They do a fantastic job in explaining the brilliant entrepreneurial idea they have in mind, the skills & resources need to execute that plan and how an MBA will provide them with the perfect platform to launch their startup in technology, healthcare, education or any of the other ‘sunrise’ sectors. So far, so good.

But something changes the minute they step into the bschool campus and the mindset change continues as they move into the job hunting phase.

Written by Sameer Kamat

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.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Entrepreneurship ranks high on the careers list of ambitious folks who want the flexibility and the freedom of managing their own business ventures. Managing a startup is the best way to pool in all the knowledge picked up in a top Bschool. In this guest post for MBA Crystal Ball, Nupur Gupta covers the best MBA programs for entrepreneurs and the excellent resources they offer. There’s a lot of information in there (including useful links for further reading), so bookmark the page and digest the data slowly.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Entrepreneurship as a career figures high on the preferences of many. Compared to regular corporate jobs, the nice warm feeling of knowing that you’ll get your monthy salary is absent, but there’s a whole lot more to compensate for that. Freedom, flexibility and a tremendous sense of job satisfaction.
Tepper MBA Vikram Narayan is the founder of BookBuzzr, which provides authors with a unique online marketing platform for their books. An extremely down-to-earth guy, with no airs about the success that he has managed to achieve, Vikram shares with us his entrepreneurial journey that started from Carnegie Mellon University and has brought him back to India. During the phone interview, I picked up quite a few ideas from him.

Read his views and suggestions on bootstrapping a startup. Inspiring!

Written by Sameer Kamat

In India, family owned businesses have done very well. They generate a lot of jobs and keep the economy growing. Millions of employees work with a single entrepreneur managed or family businesses. Quite a few of such family businesses grow into empures, big enough to take on the might of the best multinational companies. But the original small company culture tends to get retained. Some like it, some don’t.
Shantanu Bhattacharya has worked with both types of companies and has strong opinions about why the family owned business model doesn’t work for him. Shantanu is also a King Kong when it comes to Ping Pong. A very talented Table-Tennis player who could have done very well in sports (national and international level) if the corporate work hadn’t lured him in.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Dual degrees like the JD-MBA offered by the Kellogg School of Management and Northwestern University’s School of Law can be a great way to learn about two disciplines that have more overlap that we generally assume.
However, compared to the regular 2-year MBA programs, these longer and more expensive joint degree options can seem more mysterious than they are. Apart from the data available on the school websites, there’s not much information about JD-MBA programs.
Jeremy Wilson had a very eclectic background – engineering, politics, consulting, startups, archaeology – before he decided to attend the JD-MBA program at Kellogg. In this interview he answers many of the frequently asked questions about the program.

Written by Sameer Kamat

You could pass her off as a young, aspiring entrepreneur trying to learn the ropes at a top business school. Young, she definitely is. But she’s gone way past the ‘aspiring’ stage.

Sila Toksoz already had a Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree in Materials Science & Nanotechnology and a Bachelors degree in Molecular Biology & Genetics when she launched her Biotech startup (Biyonesil Biological Products) in Turkey.

Her entrepreneurial journey started after winning a business plan competition while she was still studying. Now she’s planning to take it all to the next level.

Written by Sameer Kamat

In the book ‘Beyond The MBA Hype’ I talk about alternative options to explore to reach some popular post-MBA goals. Launching an entrepreneurial venture is one of them. Probably that’s what prompted an MBA aspirant on one of the MBA discussion forums where MBA Crystal Ball has a presence, to wonder whether he should re-direct his tuition fees (roughly 60 lakh rupees) to being a franchise owner for a popular fast-food chain.

His situation was unique as he had already applied to several business schools and had got an offer from