A Shared Nanyang MBA Experience With Two Very Different Journeys

If you think wedding preparation is difficult, spare a thought for Yuvraj Gupta and Mohini Asthana. The couple spent 2024 planning a full-scale Indian wedding while applying to the Nanyang MBA program together. 

As they both cross the finish line two years later, Yuvraj and Mohini can now laugh off the stress of juggling two life-changing events. “We decided to do the Nanyang MBA together before our marriage was official,” Yuvraj explained.

Yuvraj and Mohini can consider it handled. They both completed their Nanyang MBA and made the final Dean’s Honors List reserved for the graduating cohort’s top 10%; Mohini leaves as class Valedictorian, Yuvraj as Post Graduate by Coursework (PGC) Class Champion. While their successes are their own, they acknowledge they could never have come this far without each other’s unwavering support. 

As Mohini put it, “By doing the Nanyang MBA together, we actually got to learn a lot more about each other than we probably would have otherwise.” 

MAKING THE NANYANG MBA LEAP TOGETHER 

Mohini and Yuvraj first met while studying at the National Institute of Engineering in Mysore, India, early in their respective careers as Software Engineers. 

Mohini progressed from an engineering role at Cisco to product leadership at Perforce Delphix, where she helped build software solutions for data virtualization and compliance. “I realized most of it was deeply technical, so I decided an MBA would help me bring more value to the company,” she explained. 

Yuvraj’s tenure at Siemens and CitiusTech saw him pioneering the integration of machine learning (ML) within the healthcare space. Specifically, he worked on Siemens’ first-ever recommendation engine using ML to help doctors distinguish cancerous growths from benign ones. “That was my first taste of ML and AI,” he recalled. “It sparked my interest in learning more about this field.” 

Both Mohini and Yuvraj met individually with the Nanyang MBA admissions team during a roadshow in Bangalore. “They thought that we were two different candidates who were just accompanying each other,” Yuvraj explained. “When they realized that we were about to get married, they were taken aback – like, how are we planning the rigorous admission process at the same time?” 

NEGOTIATING THE MARRIED MBA EXPERIENCE 

Yuvraj and Mohini married in February 2025. Before their arrival on campus in July that year, the program management made the strategic decision to separate them within the cohort. “We had classes at different hours, so we were on campus during different times,” Mohini recalled. “We would only see each other later in the evening. That was quite hard in the beginning when we were recently married.” 

Few professors and classmates knew that they were husband and wife. Even so, Yuvraj worried that classmates might assume they compared notes while on competing teams. “We made it a point that in these situations, we would always show our own thought process in our work, so we can defend it – not just taking from the other person,” Yuvraj explained. 

The arrangement had its challenges, but being in the same MBA program also gave Yuvraj and Mohini a built-in source of support. “When the course was getting hard, we could come home to each other and focus on our personal lives,” Mohini explained. “And when we wanted to brainstorm solutions or understand a concept, we helped each other a lot.” 

“Because we come from the same undergrad school, we have this common lingo – I understand her work, and she understands mine,” Yuvraj said. “We learned actively from each other, by observation; those moments made a difference for both of us.” 

MOHINI’S JOURNEY: BUILDING COMMUNITIES AND BREAKING SILOS 

With their respective friend groups and pursuits, Mohini and Yuvraj each forged their own path to excellence within the Nanyang MBA. 

Mohini’s tenure was defined by her zeal for community-building. As Chair of her cohort’s Tech and Innovation Club, Mohini strove to transform the organization into a collaborative family. “Whenever I talk to people, I try to learn from their experiences, share mine, and give them a sense that we are together in this,” she recalled. 

To this end, she invited executive leaders from Google and OCBC to campus. “They stayed for over two hours after our panel discussions, talking to students in person,” explained Mohini. “It was an informal way of providing mentorship from industry people to our cohort, and bringing my connections to them. 

“A lot of times we make our own connections and keep them to ourselves,” reflected Mohini. “But the whole point of an MBA network is that we share it with the rest of the cohort, making the network larger and more tight-knit.” 

YUVRAJ’S MISSION: BREAKING THE FINANCE BARRIER THROUGH CASE COMPETITIONS 

For his part, Yuvraj gravitated to international case competitions, where MBA participants propose solutions to real-world cases presented by actual business clients. “I wanted to apply what I learned from the non-tech side of my MBA, where it can be pressure-tested,” Yuvraj explained. 

Yuvraj joined the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge as the only non-finance student on the team. He proposed they design a $250 million financial vehicle to protect the Mekong Delta’s rice and shrimp infrastructure. “The idea came very randomly to me through our Business Study Mission in Vietnam,” Yuvraj recalled. 

The project utilized supply chain insetting, where companies invest in nature-based solutions within their own value chain to secure long-term resilience. At the case competition’s global finals in London, Yuvraj’s team received positive feedback from impact investors evaluating their presentation. 

“Once they realized I don’t come from a traditional finance background, they were more curious to know how I see things in this area,” explained Yuvraj. “It made me more comfortable speaking to an elite financial circle.” 

MAKING THEIR MARK ON THE MBA WORLD SUMMIT 

Their individual paths converged again at the MBA World Summit in Heilbronn, Germany, where both Yuvraj and Mohini represented the Nanyang MBA among the Summit’s 100 global MBA leaders. Both also went on to host their own student-led Summit Laboratory Sessions there. 

Yuvraj called his session “The Last Human Standing,” exploring how leaders and AI can coexist in the workplace. His central argument was that human judgment remains crucial even as AI takes on more execution.  

“You are basically a filter between the information, between what the system tells you and what you present to the world,” Yuvraj explained. “As long as that filter remains smarter, you can never be replaced by AI.” 

Mohini’s session examined how AI adoption could be undermined by poor data. Her talk emphasized the importance of data integrity and business leaders’ role in its maintenance. “If you invest time in making your underlying data layer stronger, then your AI output gets much better and is much more valuable,” she explained. “But if your data is bad, it will just amplify chaos.” 

Mohini went on to join the Genesis Sprint, a 24-hour AI hackathon that ran alongside the summit. The challenge required teams to validate a startup’s problem and identify a secondary market. 

The problem initially appeared to concern vehicle registration, but Mohini and her teammate dug deeper and identified a broader data interpretation problem, eventually finding an application in medtech. The approach won over the startup founder, who told them: “You’ve given us a roadmap that we can actually walk on.” 

THE ROI OF TRANSFORMATION 

What’s next for Mohini and Yuvraj? Their next move remains open, with opportunities in Bangalore and Germany on the table. Wherever they end up, both will bring a clearer sense of the work they want to pursue and the value they can bring to it. 

The Nanyang MBA taught Yuvraj to lean into informed curiosity when stepping outside his area of expertise. “I am pretty sure I asked very stupid questions initially, because I wasn’t a finance professional while being part of the biggest finance case competition out there,” Yuvraj explained. “All I had was curiosity that got me a seat at that table with people who saw value in my opinion.” 

For Mohini, the Nanyang MBA’s return on investment (ROI) lay in learning to look beyond individual functions and see the enterprise as a whole. 

“Before the MBA, connecting the dots was hard because I didn’t know how marketing operates, why operations are doing this or why supply chain is doing that,” she explained. “If you want a leadership position, you need a vision where you can see the big picture – which only comes from a program like the Nanyang MBA, from a place where your professors are so well connected, they understand what they are teaching and how they help you connect these dots.” 

Yet perhaps their most lasting takeaway is the one they gained together. Two years after applying to the Nanyang MBA in the middle of wedding preparations, Yuvraj Gupta and Mohini Asthana leave with their careers moving forward, their ambitions broadened, and a shared experience that has strengthened their partnership along the way. 

“I knew that if we stepped into this unknown together, whatever we developed would solidify our bond further,” Yuvraj concluded. “Making connections together is something that makes us stronger.”  

Ready to learn more about the Nanyang MBA program at Nanyang Business School?  Find out more.

Nanyang MBA Class Of 2026

​Hear from MBA participants representing a vibrant mix of nationalities, spanning Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. From Japan and India to Singapore and the Philippines, every story adds to a truly global classroom experience.

 

---

A premier business school within a leading technological university, Nanyang Business School (NBS) is the nexus of world-class innovation, research, and business education. At NBS, we innovate through interdisciplinarity, lead with cultural dexterity, and transform for sustainability. 

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.