The Big Picture: China, Shanghai & CEIBS

Courtesy Luminary Visuals

‘DESPITE BEING HIGHLY RANKED … IT’S NOT VALUED’

Kavya Thachankary has long been sold on China as the country where the most exciting things are happening in fintech and the rest of the digital sphere. What she is not sold on is CEIBS being the springboard for international students to break into the Chinese workplace, or even to maximize the benefits of an MBA back home, which in her case is India.

Her experience in the 2018 CEIBS bootcamp, while positive in some ways, showed that her MBA journey likely leads elsewhere.

“If you go back home with a really good U.S. MBA that everyone knows, you’re definitely going to be doing well,” she tells Poets&Quants. “If you get an MBA from Booth or Tuck or somewhere, you’re going to get an amazing job. But CEIBS, despite being highly ranked, I realize now, from talking to alumni and the career desk, it’s not valued. If the companies are not valuing you as a top MBA, then I don’t know what makes you a top MBA.”

‘THE INNOVATION IS WHAT REALLY DRAWS ME HERE’

Kwadwo Owusu-Agyeman of Accra, Ghana, during the 2018 CEIBS bootcamp. Courtesy Luminary Visuals

Kwadwo Owusu-Agyeman of Accra, Ghana, another participant in the CEIBS pre-MBA bootcamp this year, also will hedge his bets by applying to some U.S. and European schools. But he definitely plans to apply to CEIBS, too, because he agrees with the experts who see China as the future in both the tech and financial services spaces.

“I spend my time researching fintech, and the type of financial technology in China is light years ahead,” says Owusu-Agyeman, 26, an investment banking analyst for IC Securities who studied computer engineering at the University of Ghana. “When I found out there was a CEIBS bootcamp, I knew I had to come, to see the school, see the city, see if it’s something I can experience.”

A few months after joining IC Securities as a tech analyst in 2015, Owusu-Agyeman made the switch to finance, working in capital markets and mergers and acquisitions, serving both institutional and corporate clients. Among other achievements, he helped manage two of the largest IPOs in the history of Ghana’s stock exchange. He likes the work — but tech is not entirely in his rearview. “The reason why I wanted to go into finance is that I wanted to understand how to run a place and what goes into raising money,” he says. “I’m a tech guy, actually, but I wanted to understand finance and investment banking.”

In that space, he spotted a big opportunity. Ghana is a country with bad banking penetration — “people don’t use banks,” Owusu-Agyeman says. “Insurance, pensions, it’s very bad — the population is informal and uneducated, so they don’t use banks. But there’s a new phenomenon, mobile banking — not smartphone banking, but a very rudimentary type of application. But that technology, as basic as it is, is revolutionizing financial services in Ghana.” But it can be much more, he adds. “And when I started reading about stuff like that, it got me really excited because the next stage is probably smartphones for the people in Africa. They don’t trust banks, but if they can understand how to bank on their phones, it will really grow. Fintech is going to skyrocket in sub-Saharan Africa.”

‘SEEING IT WITH MY EYES, IT IS MORE THAN I IMAGINED’

Owusu-Agyeman has a plan, and with the “right mix of tech and finance background,” he hopes get into CEIBS in the fall of 2019. “The innovation is what really draws me here,” he says, but he also expects to apply to Stanford, INSEAD, and some other U.S. and European schools. “Cornell has a great school that combines tech and business management.,” he adds.

One thing that might affect his calculations: Brexit. “The fintech hub in Europe is London, but with Brexit that might change.” In the U.S., might politics play a part in his decision? “I’ve looked at a lot of schools, and I’m not sure anything in government there would change my plans.”

Regardless, “the most applicable and practical things I’ve seen or read about are happening here (at CEIBS),” he says. “I really like the things I’ve absorbed here. That’s really why I’m here. I needed to see the innovation and the energy myself. I did my research, but seeing it with my eyes, it is more than I imagined.”

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