“Hey Aseem, why all these books on the weekend? Let’s go out, everyone’s going. Come!”
“No, its Raining Ibon & I have to complete this assignment by…”
“Oh, screw it!! We learn it on streets than in books anyway, come let’s go! Everyones going.”
And Ibon finally managed to drag me out of my dormitory. He was from Spain and had spent 5 years in India before landing to 2 other countries and then deciding to come over to China.
Everyone had their story.
Well, but that’s how I and my classmates from Korea, Spain, Israel, USA, Australia ended up in a single point on the globe, Downtown Shanghai, China.
Why were we here, you must be wondering.
Well as unlikely as it may seem but all of us from different nations, backgrounds, professions and cultures were here working for a single goal.
MBA.
Masters of Business Administration from CEIBS, one of the top MBA schools globally.
But why did I choose to do my MBA in China? I mean, who does their MBA in China (or anything for that matter)?
Right?
Well, there can be many answers to that question and in this piece, let’s find out the answer to that together.
Flashback!
Like every other Indian mother, mine wanted to see me wear a suit (with a tie), get in a car and go work in a multi-national company everyday.
Which I did, by the way. For 6 years. Long ones.
Not saying i hated what I was doing from 2006 to 2012. In fact, I enjoyed most of it, but then, it started getting stagnant. “It” being LIFE.
I was becoming miserable. (Don’t worry, it gets better)
Yes, I was miserable, bored and a felt out-of-place working as a software engineer at IBM, one of the largest IT companies in the world and I was sure as hell I didn’t want to do this for all of my life.
Ungrateful?
Not really, but let’s say onto a path to “self-discovery“.
There is a separate story on how I started preparing for my MBA, but let’s keep it for some other day.
I took my GMAT & appeared for a few interviews. Applied only in Asian B-schools for MBA in US, Canada or even Europe were very expensive. I mean, very.
And I wanted to do it on my own without burdening my parents.
I got a few final offers.
- Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai
- S P Jain School of Global Management, Singapore
- Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Asian Institute of Management, Philippines
- China & Europe International Business School (CEIBS), China
I did not want to do my Business masters in India for I did not want to get engulfed again in an environment full of engineers, like myself, who were just directionless or bored like I was.
I knew MBA was more about the practical exposures, learning from your peers and it would definitely help if the peers were from varied backgrounds.
I ended up opting for CEIBS for my MBA which ranked #6 globally as per Financial Times.
Shanghai & MBA
In a short time in college (where I met people from various nationalities), I realised that people’s thinking here was almost opposite to the one that we carry in India, generally speaking.
Where most of us Indians would want to settle abroad post completing their masters in that country, most of the Europeans, Americans, Koreans wanted to go back to their home-country and pursue a better career back home.
Isn’t this what nation building is?
And yes, most of these did end up going back home, like I did too later.
Anyway, my 18-month MBA experience in Shanghai opened me up towards a lot of things I could have never dreamt of.
- President of the e-commerce club post fighting an election with a tough Chinese batchmate Jerry Zhou.
- Interships in Coca-Cola, a Luxury goods start-up, a cafe named BRIX and 2 other places apart from a 3-month internship in an e-commerce company named deal.com.sg in Singapore.
- Visits to Alibaba, DangDang, Google
- 10 other things that I would love to talk about in a separate piece.
My Friends Taught me all this, unknowingly
They say, your circle makes you what you are.
Or You become what your cicle is, eventually.
During my time at CEIBS, Jerry Zhou (the guy I competed against at the election), taught me how to take yourself easy and not worry much about what people think of you.
I mean, he ended up being my vice-president in the e-commerceclub and we both even won “BEST Club of the Year” award later. True Story!
Justin Osmothorely, the guy to my right in blue (check pic at the top and the one below, to my right its him). The dude was something else.
He would sit so aware during the lectures and otherwise be so chill. He got the top grades, would understand the technicalities of business management, the fineness of it so well that it became a learning exercise in itself when he was part of the conversations.
So yea, MBA is not just experiences but also learning the nitty-gritties of the business too.
Then, there was Ane. Ane Insausti Altuna, actually. A Spaniard. The Girl in Red (check the pic at the top).
If you’d sit with her for half-an-hour for a research project, you would know that if you were doing it on your own, you will spend 2 days doing that.
Yea, I know, its getting a bit geeky. But then, today, when I am into running a business on my own or even running a Youtube channel. We do a LOT of research for every topic we pick.
And I know how important is research and what is the difference between a general research and how Ane used to do it. Those sittings with her would stay with me for life.
Then, there was Talha Khan. A Pakistani dude (baldy at the back).
If you have confidence and swag in the way you say things, you can make anyone believe you in anything you say. So, today, sometimes, when I feel I am going to get into a pitch of some sort that’s a bit out-of-zone for me, I think of Talha (not kidding!).
There are a ton of other stories that I still cherish and would remember for life. Gosh, those are still helping me in my decision making and operational tasks.
What were my learnings?
Reflecting back to the decision-making process of my MBA, I think I learnt a few lessons:
- If you have a gut feeling about something, you must definitely give it a shot. It must not be something random, but it does not need to be something really perfect.
- Try to build some professional experience before getting into an MBA programme. I mean, if I had jumped to an MBA right after my college or even after 2-3 years of professional experiene, my MBA experience wouldn’t have been that vivid. I would have still felt, incomplete.
- Look to do MBA in a place which is NOT your comfort zone. This experience must be a bit challenging. It makes you better, at the end.
- Seek learning from others. Don’t be a closed book. I am sure, I might have thrown some bit of impact on a one or few batch-mates of mine. But I had gone totally open. I am here to learn and anyone can teach me.
- Go out. Meet new people. Visit new places, with those new people. Just for experiences, All these experiences are changing you from inside as a person. You won’t know that then. This would be a very organic transition, so to say.
But then, I am glad I took the decision of doing my MBA in China, with a bunch of unknowns, who continue to impact my life in one way or the other.
我爱 CEIBS i.e. Wǒ ài CEIBS i.e. I LOVE CEIBS!
