A Conversation with Pratham Mittal, Founder of Masters’ Union & Tetr College of Business and Devashish Sharma, Member, National Committee for Skills & Livelihood, CII and Founder & CEO of Taggd
The following is an edited excerpt from the conversation.
INTRODUCTION
Devashish: Hello friends, a very warm welcome to India Decoding Jobs: Talent Council Lighthouse Series. Today is a very, very special day. I’m sitting in a unique, amazing campus—a student campus. And why is it unique?
Number one, of course, this is a campus that is situated in the heart of a very corporate part of the National Capital Region. Number two, all students here are coached and mentored by industry experts and practitioners. Their entire curriculum is designed, and the way they work and learn is entirely with business leaders. They learn from that experience and gain from that experience.
And a couple of other very important trivia: the employability of this campus is at 71%, which is the highest, especially for their business domain students. And of course, some of the highest pay packages have been offered to students who’ve graduated from this campus.
Any guesses? I’m sure many of you would have guessed—this is Masters’ Union. I have with me none other than Pratham Mittal, who is the founder of Masters’ Union and many other great entrepreneurial ventures.
Welcome, Pratham! It is absolutely amazing to have you in this grand finale episode of this season. You’ve had a very big responsibility on your shoulders. You come from a very pioneering business family which has steered the course of higher education in India, and you had the responsibility of making it big, bigger, better—and I think you’ve done it with a lot of aplomb. Congratulations for that in Masters’ Union and your other education ventures, especially Masters’ Union that we will talk about.
We as business leaders see such tremendous potential and impact that your students are already creating, and that’s wonderful. So today, friends, we’re going to have this very candid conversation. You’ve heard Pratham earlier in several media outlets. Today, on behalf of Confederation of Indian Industry and Taggd, which is India’s largest and most trusted digital RPO, I welcome you very warmly.
Pratham: Thank you so much! Very excited. This is the longest intro anyone’s ever said of me.
Devashish: So, what we’re going to do, friends, today is we have three sections. The first is called “Decoding the Jobs.” The second is called “Spilling the Beans,” and we literally would want to do that. And finally, of course, we’ll have “Expert’s Advice.” And in that section, Pratham will be representing the youth of India, who I believe completely are as big experts in the industry as some of the very experienced leaders.
So let’s begin with our first question.
SEGMENT 1: DECODING THE JOBS
Question 1: The Origin Story of Masters’ Union
Devashish: So Pratham, how did it all start – Masters’ Union ? What is your story, your own personal story behind it?
Pratham: So, I was very privileged to go to a top-ranked business school, University of Pennsylvania. It has the Wharton School of Business. And there I realized that even though it was a very highly ranked institution, I was sleeping through most of my classes. There go the rankings! And I think that was true for most of my friends as well. There were very few classes that truly inspired us. I would say out of the 40 courses I took there over four years, there’s maybe one course where I truly, was inspired to learn.
And in that course, there were no exams, no lectures, no slides, no grades, no attendance, no books, none of that. The teacher, his name was Adam Grant. The way he would teach was just giving us a problem statement and us as a group solving for that problem statement, something very rooted in reality. And because of that experience, one of the projects we got eventually became my entire life. Because that project we got, we worked on it, it became a product. That product became a company. Running that company for almost 10 years of my life.
Devashish: Wow.
Pratham: Right. So one class where the teacher was teaching us more experientially and in a hands-on manner literally gifted me my entire life. And at that moment, I had decided that sometime in my life, I will build an institution where students will not be inspired to sleep, but be inspired to really change the way the world looks for them.
It just so happened that I was back home in COVID, and I had some time on my hands. I said, “Hey, let’s give it a shot right away.”I thought I’d do it when I’m 60 or 70.
Devashish: No, no. We are aware that this idea was born during the COVID times, right?
Pratham: And so we just took up 60 kids. We literally found them online through a couple of news articles and ads that we ran. We found 60 students. Most of them paid absolutely next to nothing. And we started the experiment with a curriculum where, as I said, we go beyond exams, lectures, slides, grades, attendance, books, where students actually learn business by building a business. And then one thing led to another, and today we have almost a thousand kids across all of our programs. And as you mentioned, placements and rankings, etc. Obviously they have improved and incremented over a period of time.
Devashish: Right, right. And it’s amazing to note that we are right in the center of a complete corporate hub, and students here. You have the energy of a campus the moment you walk in, but you’re right in the middle of where business is done.
Pratham: That was another thing, right? So when you go to a medical college, it is always situated next to a medical hospital, right? And real doctors teach apprentices. You don’t have academic doctors and practicing doctors, it’s just all mixed together. The doctors, they’re doing surgeries in the morning and teaching in the evening. And I think that’s the best way to learn from the experts themselves.
That’s why when we were thinking where to build our campus, we thought it cannot be a better place than where we are today. Because here you have BCG, Bank of America, Expedia, Gartner, WPP, Volvo, Siemens, Aviva, and this is just one-third of the names in this building.
Devashish: In this building itself!
Pratham: In this building itself. And so it becomes very easy for these practitioners to come down and teach. It becomes very easy for students to be exposed to half the Fortune 500 within a one-mile radius. Across that window is Udyog Vihar, and across this door is CyberHub. Literally, I don’t think there’s any Fortune 500 that’s not represented here.
Devashish: Yeah, absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. And it’s such a fantastic energy the moment you walk in here.
Question 2: Focus on Entrepreneurship
Devashish: My next question to you Pratham is, Masters’ Union has a tremendous focus on entrepreneurship. I’ve attended this fair, this almost mela kind of setup where your students had these new ideas and all of us were walking, listening to their pitches. I think it was one of the first I’ve ever seen. So how did this idea come to you that entrepreneurship should be such a big forte at Masters’ Union? And also, how do you curate this curriculum for entrepreneurship?
Pratham: So our basic understanding and the premise of this entire institution is that the best way to learn business is to build a business. Build a business, become a job creator. Not even that. The best way to learn business is to build a business. Now, once you’ve built a business, you have enough business knowledge to then become an investment banker if you want to, to then become a marketing manager if you want to, to become an accountant if that’s what you want, to pursue a CA or to pursue services.
I really believe that the best way to learn a skill is to live that skill. Now, how you use that skill is totally up to you. Once I know how to swim, I can swim to save my life. I can swim to win a race. I can do whatever. I can swim to dive. Similarly, even though our curriculum is based on entrepreneurship, many of our students actually choose to go into traditional jobs. But I feel that having learned business the way they have, they’ll do much better at their jobs. They have such a smooth landing. They’re able to weigh the pros and cons. They know the entirety of the picture.
Devashish: The entirety of the picture, the whole nine yards.
Pratham: And one more thing I’d say is that when you’ve lived business by building it, your DNA also changes.
Devashish: Oh, it certainly does, right?
Pratham: Once you have tasted blood, you can’t go back. It’s very similar to that. So I think they become entrepreneurial. That entrepreneur gene gets activated. That spirit gets activated, and then they bring it to whatever job they do in the future. Most of my recruiters come back and tell me exactly this.
Devashish: Yes, I think that belief that in whatever job I am, it’s like I’m betting my money on it and realizing that purpose and taking it to the hill. Couldn’t agree more.
Question 3: The Talent Landscape and Future of Jobs
Devashish: Now, Masters’ Union is an institution. How do you, Pratham, see the talent landscape, and if you relate it to the future of jobs, especially where India is today?
Pratham: How honest do you want me to be?
Devashish: Brutally honest.
Pratham: Okay. I think the world that we are living in and the year that we’re living in is a year of huge change. I’ll give you some data points from last year, and then I’ll tell you my prediction for this year.
We have a large tech team that builds all of our software systems and processes in-house. Last year was the first year we did not hire anyone new. And whoever left for whatever reason, we did not replace them. And yet our productivity of that team is 10x of what it was the year before. And that’s because of agents, AI, whatever it is, I don’t know. But it is because of many different things.
This year, I really feel we’ll reach a stage and I’m going beyond Masters’ Union now, where we’ll see a company getting founded with one employee reaching ₹1,000 crores in revenue.
Devashish: Fabulous.
Pratham: You want to double-click on that as soon as that happens, right? Because one person can now use an army of agents. One smart person can use an army of agents to really build the entire tech team, to build the marketing team, to also do automation on the marketing, to then set up HR processes for those agents, to set up performance management by those agents, set up processes through those agents.
Devashish: Couldn’t agree more.
Pratham: And so once that happens, once that dam breaks, I think this entire hiring economy, this entire employee-employer relationship will come into question. The Companies Act under which people are employed, I think, was written by the British in the 1850s, if I’m not wrong. It has had its updates, but the concept of this relationship is very obsolete. I have a feeling that in 2025, the concept of employment will undergo a tremendous change.
And when the students who start college today graduate, I don’t think in 2029 or 2030 they will have jobs to go to. That is my view of the HR employment economy.
Devashish: Sure.
Pratham: And so that would bring into question your team and your company and my team and my company. What do we stand for then? We’re all part of this HR funnel in a way. Where do we go? So we’ll have to rethink colleges. We’ll have to rethink hiring. We’ll have to rethink everything, and I think we should be ready for that.
Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. And I think a lot of metamorphosis needs to be done within the next two years if you’re looking at a window of just 2030 where this might happen.
Pratham: It might be sooner. It’s as early as when AGI comes. And I just read yesterday that they’re saying, “Hey, 2025 is the year. We will release AGI 1.0.” So then 2.0 will come six months after. 3.0 will come three months after. 4.0 will come one and a half months after because it’s a half-life, right? That means by 2030, we have AGI 10.
Devashish: Yeah. And I hope everyone’s listening to this. This is truly lighthouse.
Question 4: Non-Technical Skills and Critical Thinking
Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. And that comes to my next question. Almost 80% of employers, even in this situation that we’re talking about, are looking at non-technical skills like critical thinking, analytical ability. How is Masters’ Union inculcating this in their teaching methodology as well as the curriculum, their pedagogy?
Pratham: Employers don’t care about what you know. They only care about how you think. And I think thinking is a muscle, and you have to help students train that muscle. The only way to train a muscle is to make it practice, is to make it exercise. So you have to essentially get the students to think.
Now, a traditional school-college system actually pushes students away from thinking—not just in our nation, but for the legacy across the world, I would say—because they will say, “Hey, here’s a syllabus. Don’t think. This is the syllabus I’ve given you.” Here are questions at the back of the book. That’s how you and I have studied, right? Out of these 100 questions at the back of the book, 10 will come in the final exam. Don’t think.
Devashish: True, 100%. Yes.
Pratham: And you have to get 80-90%. By the way, there are past papers. You could refer to those. So till now, our thinking was about using past papers to pass tomorrow’s exam and cracking that score. That’s what’s been happening. Now, that does not train your thinking muscle. That trains your examination muscle. That maybe trains your cramming muscle. That’s not your thinking muscle.
Thinking means that you’re taking something that exists today, manipulating it, moving it around here and there, and creating new knowledge out of it. So here, our curriculum is structured in a very interesting way. In Term One, all of our students—without having any knowledge of business—have to build their own e-commerce stores and actually sell online.
Devashish: Brilliant. This is Class 12 kids finishing Class 12. They’ve come here. Any anecdotes that you could talk about?
Pratham: I can give you 20. Please, please, happy to.
There is a student team. They have built their own candles, and it’s done in such a way that the candle wax doesn’t fall and it gets contained. I believe they have sold ₹6 lakhs worth of candles in like two months.
Devashish: Wow.
Pratham: We have students who have these pens—like a clicker pen—which is actually like a hidden camera, and they sell those hidden cameras online. I think they’ve crossed again ₹13-14 lakhs. If you just see across the room—and if the camera can move—you see Zeller over there. That’s another student team. They sell crystals online because he said that, “Hey, Swarovski is the only crystal company in India. There’s no Indian version of Swarovski. I’m going to build Zeller.”
Devashish: Fantastic.
Pratham: So he sells crystals online. ₹47 lakhs of revenue in three months because these students ideated, they thought: What is the market? Where is the gap? Train their thinking muscle. Let’s build a brand. Let’s figure out ads. Let’s figure out the website. Oh, it’s not working. Okay, we have to change now. They are training their thinking muscle.
There is no syllabus.
Devashish: There’s no syllabus.
Pratham: There is none. I tell them, “Hey, listen, you have to build a business, get revenue, get profit, get margins.” Now, as they are building their business, they realize, “We have to maintain books of accounts. We have to maintain records.” And now they are self-motivated to learn accounting because they know they have to file for taxes. Currently, in any business school, getting students to an accounting class is the toughest thing. But here, because they have to do accounts, they learn themselves. They’re thrown into the swimming pool—you have to learn how to swim.
Devashish: You have to swim. Absolutely.
Pratham: So that is how the thinking muscle gets trained. In Term Two, they all have to build a YouTube business.
Devashish: Oh, right. Any ideas on what students have done?
Pratham: Oh, so many. So many. I mean, we have a student who’s building content on K-pop.
Devashish: Right. Oh, my son would love to hear that.
Pratham: We have a student who’s building amazing content on branding. We have a student who used to run this page called “Business with Bansal”—Anurag Bansal—and he used to talk about interesting business news. Now he has his own podcast with Zerodha. And I have tens of examples like these. If you just go to Instagram and search for Masters’ Union, they’re probably tagged on our channel, and you can see all of them.
Devashish: I have seen a few. Amazing students.
Pratham: And their grades come from the number of subscribers they have, the engagement rate they have, the comments rate they have, the average view duration that they have—all the real metrics that you will judge your own podcast on. Do they get brand deals? If they get brand deals, what kind of brand deals? That’s what matters.
In Term Three, they have to build a cloud kitchen—actually sell on Zomato and Swiggy. So these are real ways to train your mind. These are real ways to keep them fresh and exercise them and not stick to a syllabus.
Devashish: Almost real-life projects.
Pratham: Much more than that. It’s real life. It’s not even a project. Jumping into the profession right away. You talk to any medicine student, they’ll tell you that they started learning medicine once they started doing OPD.
Devashish: Yeah, true.
Pratham: Before that, it’s all theory. It’s only when you start seeing patients do you learn anything about medicine. That’s the reality.
Devashish: Thank you. Very, very enlightening.
Question 5: Key Industries and Talent Preparation
Devashish: Masters’ Union focuses on some key industries. What are those? And in your mind, how are we getting talent ready for such roles that Masters’ Union is typically focusing on?
Pratham: No, we are industry-agnostic.
Devashish: Okay.
Pratham: Fully. Students go into 20 different industries. We have students who’ve gone into space science. We have students who have gone into consulting. We have students who have gone into crystal manufacturing. We have students who have gone into towel manufacturing, they’re working with Trident. So students go to different kinds of companies, different industries. Fully agnostic.
I think what we really want is our students, wherever they go, they’re able to turn heads with their energy, with their zeal, with their knowledge, and with their risk-taking ability and with their communication.
Devashish: And how we prepare them is how I said earlier, throw them in the pool, let them practice their muscle. Once they’ve practiced their muscle, they’ll be able to use it.
Pratham: One thing I will say is that if you meet any Masters’ Union student, the common thread you’ll find between all of them is just the sparkle in their eye.
Devashish: Yeah, I can see that.
Pratham: They will be alive. You will not see them sitting in a corner with their book and going away writing something. They will have this energy of like they’ll be hopping. They’ll be like, “Okay, what’s next? What’s next?” They might be a little bit impatient also, which is not necessarily a good thing. And they will bring that energy to whichever company they go to. That’s what we focus on.
Devashish: Fantastic.
Question 6: Working with Practitioners
Devashish: And they’re working with practitioners—people from the corporate world. And on live projects even through their student life. How are they able to deal with the upheaval of what comes with that role? Because they are getting real targets. They’re getting real deliverables they’re not able to meet sometimes.
Pratham: I think 80% of them don’t succeed. When you’re working with practitioners, that’s how you learn. You fail more often than not.
Devashish: And how do they take flak? Because they’re getting real feedback from real business leaders.
Pratham: How do they take flak? I mean, there are students who work with me, and I am—I don’t know if you saw earlier—there were some students who were shadowing me, and I would, to put it mildly, make their lives hell.
Devashish: Yeah, absolutely.
Pratham: And it’s controlled hell. So in a way, I’m nurturing them but pushing them to the edge. And I really feel that’s a great way to learn—to fail, to be pushed. And I think that’s the way practitioners love to teach. They bring you down and then let you come back up. In the words of Katy Perry…
Devashish: Oh, absolutely! We could play the song here right at the background.
Pratham: Yes!
Devashish: Fantastic. So with that, we come to the end of this first round, Pratham. That was enlightening completely, and I believe what we are doing in Masters’ Union will be pathbreaking. It already is. And I think when we look at 2030 and that question mark, the solution for that will come out of institutions like Masters’ Union.
Pratham: I appreciate you completely.
SEGMENT 2: SPILLING THE BEANS
Devashish: Okay, so my friends, we come to our second segment. It’s called “Spilling the Beans,” and we will expect Pratham to spill the beans literally!
Question 1: Skills Above Degrees
Devashish: And my first question to you in this section: What needs to change for corporate India to accept skills above a certain degree?
Pratham: They have to get over their obsession of tier-one institutions and tier-one degrees. And I do not think that they are good predictors of anyone’s success. Some of the best performers in my teams across have been people who went to colleges that you wouldn’t even have heard of. And I think corporate India has to move beyond labels.
Devashish: And how do we demystify tier-one, tier-two. This whole labelling that is done?
Pratham: I don’t think we should look at CVs while hiring.
Devashish: Yes.
Pratham: Throw the CV out. As simple as that. Meet the person, give them an assignment which simulates what will be required of them in their job, and then hire completely on the basis of that work product.
Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. There’s proof of work rather than proof of history. Couldn’t agree more. Just I was interviewing somebody just the other day, and it was for a senior position. This gentleman came in having done entire research on what is going well, what is not going well with my organization, with numbers from wherever he got it and he created an entire presentation. That was one of the best presentations I’ve had about my own organization.
Pratham: And those are the kind of people you want. Absolutely. And I’m sure somewhere he would have had someone telling him and throwing him into the deep end.
CVs are a huge source of gentrification. They are. CVs are the modern-day caste system.
Devashish: It is. It is.
Pratham: LinkedIn…
Devashish: Yeah.
Pratham: LinkedIn empowers today’s caste system. That if I went to X school, then I am Brahmin. If I went to Y school, I am… You know. That is what’s happening today. So you have to look beyond those labels. And this is only going to happen more and more. So I think CVs should be outlawed. I haven’t made… Just like the caste system was outlawed, the CV system, it is the same thing. A CV decides how much you get paid. It’s a label. It’s a bunch of labels.
Devashish: At least it’s a starting point from where you start getting evaluated.
Pratham: Which is what caste was, right? It was. If you come to look at it in that way, yes, absolutely.
Devashish: Great. So that had a bit of philosophy but so true to that completely.
Question 2: Talent from Smaller Towns
Devashish: What are your thoughts, Pratham, on tapping into the potential of talent from smaller towns? Now, India is India, and then there’s Bharat, right? I was just talking to one of your colleagues in Masters’ Union, a brilliant colleague, and he comes from Indore. He comes from a family whose grandfather set up some kind of microfinancing in the rural areas. How do we firstly get these stories in? And how do we make sure that talent from tier-two, tier-three towns. Again, there’s branding there, but I believe there’s a lot of reality behind that, how do we make sure they get opportunities like in institutions like Masters’ Union?
Pratham: I’m from Jalandhar, by the way.
Devashish: Yes.
Pratham: Which is a tier-3.5 town. But that’s my nana, I don’t know if anybody understands Punjabi, but my mother’s side of the family is from Ludhiana, Phagwara, Kishan Chand, and all those places.
Devashish: Understood, understood. Yeah.
Pratham: Sharp. What percentage of India works for corporate India? What’s the number?
Devashish: No, let’s do a guesstimate. I don’t know the exact…
Pratham: Yeah. I’m guessing maybe 2-3 crore people.
Devashish: Yeah, not more than that.
Pratham: 2-3 crore people. I was thinking a percentage of about 2%. So let’s say 3 crores is 2% of India works in a job employed by corporate India in tier-one, maybe tier-two cities, not till tier-three, I’m guessing. So a very small percentage of India.
Devashish: Very, very small.
Pratham: And I would maybe even venture to say that probably not the happiest India.
Devashish: Yeah.
Pratham: We continue to be largely an agrarian economy even today. Agrarian and very entrepreneurial. They’re probably, if you were to count all the people who run chemist stores plus local gold stores plus local kirana stores plus local tapri (tea stalls) and the rest of the unorganized sector, keep that aside. I’m saying only these four: chemist, local gold/sonar, tapri, kirana. In total, there are probably 2 crore establishments in India. That means these four jobs or these four entrepreneurial pursuits are as many in number as all corporate India. If I was to just count the heads there, they could outnumber this 2 crores. I am saying just count the owner. Forget about the people who he employs. Those come under that 3 crores because they’re employed.
Interestingly, it’s a very small percentage. So I don’t even want, very honestly, the tier-three Bharat to work for corporate India. Why should it? Why is corporate India the gold standard?
Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. And I was just discussing with someone just the other day, what opportunities can come if we are able to just bring opportunities within rural sectors? There is huge potential. Jalandhar people should work in Jalandhar. Why do they need to move to Gurgaon?
Pratham: And I strongly feel that Jalandhar has amazing opportunities. Agriculture is one. Mining, I didn’t know that Jalandhar had such a huge sand mining economy. It’s super interesting. My own dad and his brothers, as they were growing up, they were working in a mithai factory (sweet shop). I feel they learned more about business by working in that mithai shop that my granddad used to run than any IIM could have ever given to them. Again, the book of accounts, managing customers, managing supply, hustle and managing real customers, not case study customers. Managing the real government, not what is written on paper.
Devashish: Couldn’t agree more.
Pratham: Suddenly, when the bulldozer comes in the front and is breaking your entire shop in front of you, what do you do? How do you manage that? All of that. So tier-three India has enough opportunities in tier-three. I don’t think they should come to Masters’ Union.
Devashish: Couldn’t agree more. I don’t think they need to necessarily or there could be outlets of institutions like Masters’ Union in smaller towns.
Pratham: And they already exist, which is called family business.
Devashish: Ah, yes! In fact, I was listening to somebody in the new Trump administration talking about why India’s family businesses are so vital to India’s economy.
Pratham: Absolutely.
Devashish: I don’t know if this is what you were looking for, but absolutely.
Pratham: And thank you for spilling the beans on that.
Devashish: My next question—can I give you one more metric, please?
Pratham: Please.
Devashish: How many students graduate from a college every year?
Pratham: We have about 1-1.5 crores.
Devashish: Exactly. 1.4 crores. Exactly right. Students graduate from college every year. How many new white-collar jobs are created in India every year?
Pratham: That’s a big gap.
Devashish: How many white-collar jobs are created? New white-collar jobs—not just for freshers, but for anybody.
Pratham: I read this number in Times of India, Economic Times. It said 15 lakh.
Devashish: Yeah. All new jobs. All new jobs because of new companies getting founded, because of existing companies expanding. Just the jobs themselves, 15 lakh new openings that did not exist last year. That did not exist last year. So that means even if all of our students are very well trained, even if they are fully skilled, we say they’re not skilled right now. I’m saying skill them. Assume that every university in India is a Harvard and it skills our people perfectly. Even then, 1 crore 35 lakh kids don’t have a place to work at.
Devashish: Huge gap.
Pratham: Huge gap. I think corporate India can’t take care of India in that sense.
Devashish: Certainly not. And again, I think how do we grow the stories of those smaller entrepreneurial ventures so that they themselves do well and are able to give those opportunities in smaller towns, making those economies thrive? That’s the future for this nation.
Pratham: Couldn’t agree more.
Question 3: The Masters’ Union Logo Story
Devashish: One question in “Spilling the Beans.” There’s a story behind the Masters’ Union logo. Could you tell me that?
Pratham: Yeah. The logo is nothing but a scratch. And the scratch keeps changing. And the reason we made that is because we really feel that every new idea starts by scratching out the old idea. Every iteration requires you to scratch out the previous iteration. And I think “scratch” denotes restart, and it denotes iteration. It denotes “clean the whiteboard.”
Devashish: Clean the whiteboard. Yeah.
Pratham: It means so much to me. Change is constant.
Devashish: Change is constant. Yeah. Stay relevant.
Pratham: Those are the words. I was very lucky enough and very privileged to see the Prime Minister from afar. And he was talking about how he was designing the Skill India logo. And if you know, the Skill India logo has a computer. And he’s like, “I was looking at it, there’s a computer that does not get used anymore. It’s a very old…” So, “I have to redraw a new logo for Skill India for now.” So he was trying to be funny, and it just made so much sense to me.
Devashish: Yeah. Yeah. He’s a brilliant guy, though. I’m quite a fan, of course.
Question 4: What Are You Most Proud Of?
Devashish: What, as an entrepreneur, are you most proud of in the Masters’ Union story?
Pratham: A student.
Devashish: Your student.
Pratham: Yeah. I think lots of them. I can tell you three stories, maybe?
Devashish: Please. All right. You want to listen to this?
Pratham: The first story is of a couple, a husband-wife duo who met at Masters’ Union for the first time. They started a very interesting company where they were trying to help people order better on Zomato and Swiggy. They built this platform which will tell you exactly what you should order today because you spend a lot of time thinking about what you want to order. So it’s a real problem. They failed at that. They built something, but then Zomato changed their APIs, and they couldn’t… Because they were so dependent on them, they actually failed a couple of times. But then they kept at it, kept at it.
The husband actually got a job at Zerodha, but they still kept at it, kept at it. And now, together, husband-wife, they started another company where I think the wife has started and the husband is helping her in e-commerce. They’re selling ethnic Indian clothing. The reason I really find them inspiring is that sometimes they got a really nice job offer, and then sometimes this happened and that happened. They’ve gone through ups and downs and this and that, but eventually, when they got married, I got their card, and it had the name of their website under it. And I was like, “This is awesome!”
Devashish: Lovely, lovely.
Pratham: I think that’s a very cool story. There’s another very interesting story about these two students.
Devashish: No worries. He still loves you.
Pratham: They’ve started this gaming company that rewards loyalty points to games across studios. They used to run a software company before. They actually sold that company, and they had the humility to come back to school after having an exit. And then restarting a company from scratch.
Devashish: Wow.
Pratham: Not a lot of people would be able to do that.
Devashish: Glass half full.
Pratham: I really respect them for that. Now I have another very interesting story of Mayuresh and Ishita. They’ve built this chips and dips company called Eat Atlas. And they have these dips that they have curated from all over the world. So today, if you feel Italian, you can go for an Italian dip. If you feel Greek, you go for a Greek dip. It’s very interesting. It’s like all cuisines in one box. They’re doing a really good job as well. Completely bootstrapped but doing it really well.
There’s another AI company that two of my students have started. You have examples in every industry, and they never stop to amaze you. Every time I get an update from them, it’s something I could have never expected to come out of my students in just year one of their graduation.
Devashish: I can actually feel. Your feeling of pride is so palpable, and it’s absolutely amazing. I think it is students like this that will make all this change happen in our nation.
Pratham: Exactly.
Devashish: And in our talent landscape too, going forward, in the way it is perceived. Thank you so much, Pratham. That was “Spilling the Beans,” our segment two.
SEGMENT 3: EXPERT’S ADVICE
Devashish: We move to segment three, which is “Expert’s Advice.” And our first question here: One advice you will give to budding entrepreneurs in Masters’ Union and otherwise?
Pratham: Don’t think, just start. I think we think way too much about “Is this the right time to start? Is this the right business to start?” Risk-taking ability—I think India has risk-taking ability. But we just spend too much time thinking about that risk, contemplating. I think if that much time was spent just doing it, we would be much better off.
Devashish: The colonial era just made us so risk-averse for some reason.
Pratham: No, I think India is still the most risk-seeking. I think the US is way more risk-averse. Britain is so risk-averse. Think about it. The Europeans are way more risk-averse than we are because they also have a lot to lose. I don’t think it’s the colonial hangover. If anything, I would actually appreciate the colonial hangover. I think it actually makes us take more risk. But it could still even be more because the cost of starting up today is near zero. As I said, you don’t need to hire anybody now. A $20 agent can do more than an army of 20 fresh grads.
Devashish: Absolutely. I think at Taggd, we’re training a lot of these AI-enabled agents to do some pathbreaking work.
Question 2: Managing Multiple Ventures
Devashish: Pratham, you’re a serial entrepreneur yourself. You manage two of your ventures currently, Masters’ Union and Tetr, right? How are you able to?
Pratham: They’re the same. For me, they’re the same. They’re just two manifestations of the same thing.
Devashish: Yes. You want to tell us about your other venture too?
Pratham: It’s the same thing. So Tetr is Masters’ Union across the world.
Devashish: Masters’ global footprint.
Pratham: Global footprint. That’s about it. It could have been Masters’ Union International.
Devashish: Fantastic.
Pratham: I don’t look at it as two different things. The students are here right now. The Tetr kids are in Masters’ Union campus, and the Masters’ Union kids are in Tetr’s campus.
Devashish: It’s so good to know that an Indian brand grown from India is taking education to… I really feel, you know, how India became the center for software services, there’s a very good chance that in the next 5-10 years, we’ll also become the center for education.
Pratham: Once again. Once, because education is a services economy. It’s a services project. So what are the three or four largest services? Software, hospitality, health, and education. Other than education, India is leading everywhere else. So what is to say that this is the next bastion India will conquer? I really think it should. I think because the cost of servicing of education in India is lower, arbitrage-wise, that benefit the education industry has never utilized. And I feel people will see it now, and this opportunity will get utilized because college in America is expensive. College in India can be cheaper, only if we can just bring up the quality a little bit. Why can’t we have a New Yorker coming to Bengaluru to study if he’s getting the same skills, better skills, at much lower cost? I feel that’s going to be the future.
Devashish: And real-life business opportunities.
Pratham: Many more. Yeah. Sure, that too. Yeah.
Devashish: Fantastic.
Question 3: Personal Lessons in Entrepreneurship
Devashish: Your personal lessons in entrepreneurship that you’ve learned the hard way, Pratham. I’m still learning. I think in the journey so far, any place where you’ve stumbled, fallen, picked yourself up again?
Pratham: I think we take ourselves way too seriously. And we think that every issue that we face in the company is an existential issue, and we make a mountain of a molehill. And that leads to a lot of stress, and that leads to a lot of anger, and that leads to a lot of wrong decisions at work. So I think if you just take yourself less seriously, know that you’ll be fine.
Devashish: Did you ever find yourself taking your own self less seriously, or you took yourself too seriously at a point, and you felt you wanted to change?
Pratham: All throughout. All throughout. I think in the last 10-15 years, I’ve just been a very angry and a very negative presence in my own team.
Devashish: And what made you change that? How have you changed the paradigm for yourself?
Pratham: Because I’ve realized that doesn’t do anything. So something is wrong—you fix it. And I’m realizing that it’s not doing well for my team. It’s not doing well for the productivity. I think that if I’m scolding somebody, hopefully that person will do a better job. Now, it usually doesn’t happen like that.
Devashish: It does worse.
Pratham: Yeah. So I think I have to change that about myself, and I’m trying to. Gupta has been helping me quite a bit.
Devashish: He does that to everybody.
CLOSING
Devashish: But thank you, Pratham. This was a fantastic session, and I personally have learned so much with this conversation. And I believe what you’re doing at Masters’ Union and other entrepreneurial ventures—this is going to change the way education happens in our country, not only in higher education but how students perceive how they need to be educated. And I congratulate you for making this start. Thank you so much, Pratham, and I wish you all the very best.
Pratham: Thank you.
Devashish: Thank you, friends. I hope you enjoyed this session. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Pratham: Thank you.
