Bayar Delgernaran (Denar)

National University of Singapore, NUS Business School

“A German-born Mongolian with experience living in 7 countries. I once failed at a blockchain-based startup.”

Hometown: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Fun Fact About Yourself: Entered university at age 15 because I skipped 3 years of school.

Undergraduate School and Major: Hitotsubashi University, Bachelor of Social Sciences (Social Psychology)

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Irbis Ventures, Founder & COO

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of the MBA curriculum or activities that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? My undergraduate degree was in social psychology gained at a Japanese university. I always had a huge gap in my knowledge of business compared to a lot of colleagues, always having to play catch up with the most basic of business terms. I want this void filled. My intention is to take courses on financial management, financial accounting, managerial economics, and electives that will make me a better decision maker after graduation.

What quality best describes your MBA classmates and why? Effective communicators. Never in my life have I been surrounded by this many people who can communicate effectively with one another. Usually there is only one person in a team who does it and not almost everybody. I am learning a lot from my peers from just daily conversations. Also, I am learning how to listen more which is one of my weak points.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: My biggest accomplishment in my career is my adaptability, which was honed through various work environments and positions around the world. Even though I did not know anything about marketing, after many trials-and-errors, I was able to help grow the Kobo business in Japan grow from one of the smallest players to being a dominant player in the span of over a year. In Canada, I learned how to code in SQL and was able to improve on its CRM system through a clear reporting system that showed where we could improve in conversion rates. As a business developer working from Singapore, I was able to work on the marketing strategy of Taiwan’s first fully digital bank. As an entrepreneur, I was able to assemble and manage a robust development team in Mongolia and develop the Irbis platform which matches investors and startups.

Describe your biggest accomplishment as an MBA student so far? Our team was able to get selected as finalists at the NUS Fintech Month Hackathon. In just a few hours, we worked together in harmony and created a well-rounded system that detected corporate loan fraud. I was pleasantly surprised that we even got selected.

What has been the biggest surprise in your first months of business school? It was how the classes are different from my undergraduate classes. The amount of content taught in one class was surprisingly overwhelming. Furthermore, it is quite like work, you must always come well prepared and must participate actively in the discussions. On top of the knowledge I gain from professors, I am learning different viewpoints on the same issue from my peers.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career? In my last nine years of working in Japan, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan, and Mongolia, I had issues with getting my message out during business meetings and have become dependent on just hard facts. I was becoming more and more inflexible when encountering new problems and needed to learn how to re-frame my thinking process. Also, I wanted to become more focused on my goals by learning from the wealth of diverse experiences that the other students will bring from their careers. My career has only been involved in the latest technology companies and lacks a good understanding of other industries.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? Even though I looked at a few other programs, after a long deliberation process, I did not apply to any other MBA program. The NUS MBA program felt just right for my needs of length, modules, and the network it had.

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