Arohi Jain

University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business

https://www.linkedin.com/in/arohijain/

Hometown: Delhi, India

Graduate School and Major / Degree program: Master of Management, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, 2020

Undergraduate: Computer Science Engineering, Shiv Nadar University. India

Fun Fact About Yourself: I started a rock band during high school.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your life so far: My biggest accomplishment has been to launch and grow my startup BreezeBubble during the pandemic as a sole founder. It has had it’s ups and downs but in just one year I have gone from brainstorming an idea to launching our website, our crowdfunding campaign on kickstarter and sold the product to hundreds of customers.

Was entrepreneurship always your career goal? I realized my passion for entrepreneurship while working on a business idea during my freshman year of undergrad in computer science engineering. Since then I have worked on a few different startup ideas, taken up a management minor and undertaken a semester at Stanford university in technology entrepreneurship. I launched my first startup ‘piggyback” during junior year with 3 co-founders. We worked on it for 2 years before deciding to shut it down due to legal barriers. I am now working full time on my startup BreezeBubble

What led you to pursue a business Masters at this point in your personal development? After my first startup shut down, I realised that I needed to hone my business skills through the Master of Management program. This would allow me to learn about all aspects of a business: finance, marketing, business law, product development, leadership etc and give me the right tools to start my own company.

How did you decide if a MM was worth the investment? What was the key factor that led you to choose the MM at Michigan Ross and why was it so important to you? The key aspects of the MM program that helped make my decision was: the highly qualified faculty and professors, previous MM alum portfolios and careers, the real world action learning programs offered as part of the course, and the several clubs and opportunities available to join as part of Ross School of Business. This and a potential to be part of the University of Michigan alumni network made it worth the investment. In most of the rankings, the MM prgram at Michigan Ross seemed to be one of the top programs with the best career prospects on graduation. This was the key factor that led me to choose Ross.

What quality best describes your classmates? Smart, Talented, Diverse Skill Sets , Resilient.

Tell me about your venture: My venture BreezeBubble, is a smart mask with a flexible edge design that provides high comfort and high protection to people living in polluted air environments. I started developing this mask last year to combat the problem of pollution and have now pivoted to servicing the covid market. The mask is washable, reusable, comfortable, does not fog up your glasses and is designed for high safety. We recently launched our crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter and blew past our funding goal of $10,000 within the first 48 hours of going live. Our mission is to provide quality breathing to everyone across the world to enable an active and healthy lifestyle.

How has your business school experience helped you in creating and launching your business? The people I met and networks I formed during the MM program have been extremely helpful and invaluable in my journey with BreezeBubble. Some of the clubs and professors who have been super helpful:

1) Entrepreneurship and Venture Club and Catalyst program at Ross who gave me access to Zell Lurie resources, Ross networks, and mentorship during my journey
2) Dare to Dream Phase 2 $1500 grant – I participated in Phase 2 of this feasibility study that helped me with customer discovery, business plan
3) Professor Jim Price, Marcus Collins, Stewart Thornhill have been super helpful in giving me advice and mentorship for Breezebubble.
4) Ann Arbor SPARK – I am currently working with the Ann Arbor SPARK incubator who has helped me a lot with grants and services like legal, accounting and business development.

What is the biggest/most important lesson you have learned during your studies? As long as you are working on something that you are passionate about and creating value for other individuals, you will stay internally motivated and thoroughly enjoy the journey building your career.

What are the next steps for you / your entrepreneurial venture? The next steps are to ramp up production so that we can provide our comfortable and high protection masks to thousands of people during this pandemic.

Where do you see yourself in five years? It’s difficult to think long term now. The pandemic has put so many things into perspective and it seems that you can’t really plan your life ahead. But if everything works out, I see myself having expanded our team, raised venture capital and reach international markets to provide our masks to millions of people around the world living in polluted air environments to enable them to breathe clean air.

DON’T MISS: MEET THE MIM ENTREPRENEURS OF 2020