Why An Already-Successful Indian Entrepreneur Chose Babson For His MBA

Rakshit Reddy: “I was always fascinated by Babson. One of my co-founders did his undergrad at Babson. He was always talking about how the faculty are very helpful, how the entire community is supportive when somebody’s starting something.”

WHAT BABSON OFFERS

Babson College has long been considered one of the top business schools in the world for entrepreneurship. Earlier this year, the Olin School maintained its title as U.S. News‘ No. 1 school for startups, landing the coveted spot for the 29th straight year. Not bad for a school tied for 57th in U.S. News‘ overall ranking.(Babson is second in Poets&Quants‘ 2021 entrepreneurship ranking; our new ranking will be published in a few weeks.)

What makes Babson such a startup hotbed? Stephen Spinelli, who took over as president of Babson in July 2019, credits the integration of the school’s “thought and action” approach that emphasizes smart action, failing fast, and pivoting based on what you learned — as well as the school’s focus on interdisciplinary collaboration among its faculty, no matter what discipline they come from.

“It is a purposeful strategy for the business model at Babson,” Spinelli explained in a 2021 interview with Poets&Quants, pointing out that Babson is home to multiple institutes and centers focused on the marriage of thought and action — or the theory and practice to teach students an entrepreneurial mindset.

“That has created this more direct connection between what happens in the classroom and a student’s ability to self-curate their interaction with the marketplace at the same time,” Spinelli said. “Those centers and institutes allow a student to do that with a greater degree of self-curation and freedom. You have to have finance, you have to have accounting, you have to have marketing. You have to have these integrated studies.” Then you can apply those in the different institutes and centers, he said. “That coordination and integration that is really led by the students is probably the single-most innovation that I’ve seen.”

RAKSHIT’S FIRST YEAR AT BABSON: ALL ABOUT SKILL ACQUISITION

Rakshit Reddy: “If you get exposed to this world, where you have an entrepreneurship community, you can do wonders.”

Rakshit Reddy, on sabbatical from Waycool Foods, struggled initially in the Babson MBA while taking core finance courses last year. The curriculum — and the faculty and members of his cohort — helped him grasp concepts that had eluded him as “an operations guy.”

“Courses like Corporate Finance, which is actually evaluating opportunities or raising funds — those courses helped me actually understand finance as a whole,” he says. “Obviously, a person like me who comes with a zero finance background — all my life, I worked in operations — to learn and to study something about accounting or finance in the first semester, it was a nightmare for me because I’m not a numbers guy. If you talk to me in missions or automation, I can talk to you.

“It was very overwhelming, but again, the cohort and the faculty are very supportive, and they helped me understand the concepts. I used to reach out to them and go meet them, our professors, and we actually had one-on-one conversations.”

One key challenge: technology, terminology, and accounting techniques differ slightly in India and the U.S.

“I always come with the Indian perspective because I never worked in a global context,” Reddy says. “They used to correct me because some of the technologies or terminologies, what we use in the USA and what we use in India are slightly different. And also the way we account books is slightly different. I was able to gain those skillsets, and actually that helped me a lot and improved me.”

ADVICE FOR BUDDING ENTREPRENEURS

What is Rakshit Reddy’s advice for budding entrepreneurs considering business school?

“In each and every stage of our life, we have challenges, and we come up with new things to overcome them,” he says. “Humans should not stop learning. That’s why I decided that to leave automotive consulting, leave behind what I knew, and join the startup. ‘This is my comfort zone, and they have a startup and they will actually let me work here.’ You come out of your comfort zone, learn something, meet new people, meet different entrepreneurs who bring different experience to the table — and when you interact with them, then you get a global experience.

“This is what I can say: If you get exposed to this world, where you have an entrepreneurship community, you can do wonders. You never know, you may come up with a different business idea, too.”

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