2018 Best MBAs: Ravish Majithia, Babson College (Olin)

 

Ravish Majithia

F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College

“A materials scientist by training, a chemist at heart and an entrepreneur in the works.”

Age: 33

Hometown: Mumbai, India

Fun fact about yourself: My ice bucket challenge was to jump in cold waters of Crater Lake, OR

Undergraduate School and Degree:

Ph.D., Materials Science, Texas A&M University

B.E., Chemical Engineering, University of Mumbai

Where did you work before enrolling in business school? R&D Engineer (Process Dev.) at Intel, Inc

Where did you intern during the summer of 2017? Worked on my startup Magnomer through Summer Venture Program at Babson College. Funded by the Lewis Institute for Social Innovation at Babson College.

Where will you be working after graduation? Intend to launch Magnomer into the market as founder/CEO

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

Recipient of Babson Fellowship for MBA studies

Recipient of 2018 Ralph Z. and Charlotte R. Sorenson Scholarship Awards for Meritorious Achievement

Club Activity:

President of the Babson Energy and Environment Club 2018 (Co-organized the 11th edition of the Babson Energy and Environment Conference in Spring 2017, Leading the 12th Edition of the conference to be held in Spring 2018)

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I founded Magnomer during my time at Babson. I have been honored that Magnomer was accepted in Babson’s summer Venture Program and Babson’s Business Development Hatchery. During my MBA, I alongside the Magnomer team took a concept and used all the tools that a business schools offers to turn it into a business.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? A couple: I came to Babson College from a hardcore research background. I’ve published over ten original research papers in the field of nanomaterials during my PhD years. My third paper was however my proudest achievement in research. We had hit a wall during the course of the research and were getting results very contrary to expectations. Our team, including myself, spent about six months trying to make sense of our observations. After much brainstorming in which we questioned almost every basic assumption there was and subsequently designed studies to rule out external factors systematically. The answer to the problem came from the most basic and unnoticed fact – we were using glass test tubes in our lab! While seems to be a laughably simple problem – we ended up discovering a fairly major flaw in design for the entire field. Of course we, switched away from glass later. The lessons from the experience will always stay with me. Always question and stay curious. Sometimes the simplest and the most basic assumptions are flawed.

The second is not as nerdy as the first. I was accepted into Babson College on a fellowship – which really allowed me to make the decision of quitting my job to pursue my passion (of starting Magnomer). I’ll always be thankful to the Admissions committee at Babson for that.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? This is a very hard question. I’ve had the privilege of taking classes with multiple top notch faculty members here at Babson. Amongst them are Brigitte Muehlmann (Accounting), Mark Potter (Finance), Anirudh Dhebar (Marketing), Andrew Corbett (Entrepreneurship), and Cheryl Kiser (Social innovation). I would be remiss if I did not mentioned Debi Kleiman, Cindy Klein-Marmer and the Blank Center at Babson for the out-of-class advising.

While picking one person is hard, the reason for picking them is not. Almost all Babson faculty that I have encountered have been extremely helpful in helping me think about my startup. The faculty at Babson not only have given me helpful advice, but also have been forthcoming in connecting me to their network. I owe a lot to the faculty members at Babson!

What was your favorite MBA Course Again, a very difficult question. Every class I’ve been to at Babson has managed add nuance to my outlook of running a business. I especially loved New Venture Creation which I used to build a first ever business plan for Magnomer (my startup). We were given an opportunity to pitch to one of the biggest angel groups in the Boston area at the end of the class. (Now, that’s real life experience in classroom). Not far behind is the Leading for Social Value class where we learnt from and pitched to Corporate Social Responsibility executives at Target, Verizon Campbell’s

Why did you choose this business school? I wanted to pursue my passion for entrepreneurship. I’ve always had ideas which could turn into businesses. I came up with a few during my Ph.D years – but never did anything about it for the fear of failure. I applied to Babson after being inspired by its entrepreneurial culture and an innovative but systematic approach of thinking about the process of taking an idea and turning it into a business. Babson is truly one of a kind in this respect and that’s the reason I chose this school.

What is your best piece advice to an applicant hoping to get into your school’s MBA program? Be different, be entrepreneurial. Babson lives and breathes ET&A (Entrepreneurial Thought and Action) and is looking for applicants who have a track record of taking calculated risks and showcased an out-of-the-box approach to their career path.

What is the biggest myth about your school? Being a standalone business school, the biggest myth surrounding Babson is that the campus lacks technical savants. That is far from the truth. A good number of Babson students (grad and undergrad) master technical skills just because they want to run their own business. Also, Olin College of Engineering is literally next door!

What was your biggest regret in business school? I have never really truly explored the Babson campus. Classwork, Startup, Student clubs have kept me busy and I haven’t had the time to just walk around campus and enjoy its beauty. Babson has a very pretty campus and I feel that I’ve missed out.

 Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Saachi Singh. Saachi was the youngest Graduate Student council President at Babson and truly a selfless individual.

 Who most influenced your decision to pursue business in college? My former PhD advisor – Ken Meissner. He’s been a lifelong mentor. He’d done a startup earlier in his career and gave me helped me think through the pros and cons of taking a ‘sabbatical’ and coming to Babson. He pointed out that business school education would stay with me even if things go south with my startup. His objective perspective nudged me to make the jump.

 “If I hadn’t gone to business school, I would be…probably still working a full-time job wondering what it would be like to risk everything behind ‘an idea’.”

 If you were a dean for a day, what one thing would you change about the MBA experience? Café food. Enough said!

What are the top two items on your bucket list?

Make all disposable products recyclable!

Visit all the national parks in the US

In one sentence, how would you like your peers to remember you? By picking up a single-use plastic spoon and realizing that it has our marker technology on it – making the spoon recyclable.

What is your favorite movie about business? The Founder (the movie about Ray Crock and McDonalds). Biggest lesson: You have to be nuts about your company.

What would your theme song be? “Hurdy Gurdy Man” by Donovan

Favorite vacation spot: Crater lake, OR

Hobbies? Biking

What made Ravish such an invaluable addition to the class of 2018?

“Ravish is the best kind of student to have at Babson. He is an entrepreneur – mind, body and soul. While a scientist by training, his curiosity and passion have resulted in a huge amount of progress on his startup while still a student. He is truly brilliant, but he makes his smart thinking accessible to all and is helpful to his classmates. As part of our 10 week Summer Venture Program, where he worked intensively over the summer on his company, Ravish was a valuable member of the community. He would help the other entrepreneurs in any way he could. He has the wonderful ability to get results, teach others, and be humble about it. As an example, during a sales workshop, Ravish shared tactics on how he was able to get 25% positive response rates from the targets that he reached out to. As he humbly shared what he did with the other students teams, everyone around the room was glued to each word (some with jaws dropped). He hustled and learned at an incredible pace. It seemed like he was everywhere all at once.

Ravish is building a company with a big mission that could have enormous impact on the world. And he is dedicated to making a difference particularly in the realm of sustainability. With his company, Magnomer, he is tackling a very difficult problem that requires aligning multiple large stakeholders and capex. Yet he is able to connect and enroll these organizations and people in his mission because of his passion and smarts. These are the kinds of entrepreneurs we strive to create at Babson. He is a poster child for ET&A (Entrepreneurial Thought and Action), Babson’s methodology for teaching entrepreneurship. When faced with an obstacle he simply learned something and took action to figure it out.

Ravish contributes his time and energy to multiple endeavors on the Babson campus, all while getting his company launched. It is amazing to me the extent to which he has been able to capitalize on his time at Babson and make the most of it. Everyone that works with him from faculty to mentors appreciates his thoughtful, diligent approach. His entrepreneurial approach to solving hard problems will serve him long after he has left Babson. He has made an indelible mark on our Babson community, we all look forward to seeing Magnomer change the face of the recycling world one fork at a time.”

Debi Kleiman

Executive Director, Blank Center for Entrepreneurship

Babson College

DON’T MISS: THE ENTIRE LIST OF THE BEST & BRIGHTEST: CLASS OF 2018