Learn Business by Running Business! How Masters Union is innovating its Curriculum, Pedagogy and Faculty-mix to create Day-1 ready tech-managers

“MBAs don’t start delivering on Day 1. They need months of training and hand holding…”, said one of India’s largest MBA recruiters on the side-lines of a national HR conference recently. We’ve seen recent employability surveys confirming this opinion. According to the World Economic Forum, of the 13 million people who join India’s workforce each year, only one in four management professionals and one in five engineers are employable.

So how can B-schools solve this challenge? Masters’ Union (MU), a Gurugram based start-up B-school, is innovating its curriculum, pedagogy and faculty-mix to achieve just this – Day-1 ready technology savvy MBA graduates. MBAUniverse.com interacted with the Founder, Faculty and Students of this innovative B-school to get a ring-side view of this new B-school model.

But before we get into how Masters’ Union is innovating its curriculum, faculty and pedagogy, here is a quick introduction. “Masters’ Union is designed with the vision of becoming a world-class, technology focussed business school to create contemporary leaders in business and technology,” says Founder Pratham Mittal. Masters’ Union recently released its Placement Report where the Average Salary (CTC) was INR 33.10 Lakhs, placing it at par with the top B-schools in India.

Coming back to the issue of lack of industry-ready MBAs, most traditional B-schools have innovated little to plug this gap. Clearly, Masters’ Union is different. It is taking the bull by the horns and is innovating virtually all aspects of how business education should be taught.

 Upon unpacking their approach, we uncovered five strategic-pillars:

1. Differentiated Vision & Mission that adopts a medical and law education’s approach to management education
2. Core Curriculum that marries new-age electives with foundational courses
3. Practitioner-led hands-on Pedagogy that is focused on Experiential Learning
4. CXOs collaborate with Academics for a Holistic Learning Experience
5. Located in the beating heart of business

Let’s dive deep into each of these pillars to gain a better understanding…

1. Differentiated Vision & Mission
To start with, Masters’ Union has taken inspiration not from, say the INSEAD or the IIMs, but medical and law Schools! “At Masters’ Union, our vision is to build a workforce that is relevant to contemporary industry needs,” says Pratham Mittal. He adds, “We observed that in the Indian higher education ecosystem, medical schools witness doctors teaching students, and in law school, one gets guidance from practicing lawyers. However, business schools are yet to see this immersion. This is the gap that Masters’ Union is aiming to address.” This differentiated vision has percolated into every aspect of Masters’ Union’s strategy and execution.

2. Curriculum
A typical MBA program consists of core curriculum and electives. A core curriculum provides a strong foundation in the fundamental practices of business including finance, accounting, marketing, economics, leadership, strategy etc. Electives are geared towards developing expertise and skills in the student’s areas of choice.

So, how does Masters’ Union offer its core curriculum and electives in just 12 months? And how does its curriculum compare with the top IIMs or ISB? MU’s curriculum can be summed up as:

• It offers core courses that help students build a foundation in business and management, which is similar to most prominent B-schools in the country.
• Then, it offers skilling Courses to help students build competence in tools such as web development, user experience, data science and programming and others.
• This is followed by industry electives where students can pursue up to two majors in any of the following specialisations - advanced data analytics, technology & product management, digital & e-commerce businesses or banking, PE & VC.
• Finally, this in-class curriculum is supplemented with equal credits in Outclass Challenges where students are expected to apply the learnings from in-class subjects in building and running successful businesses.

Like any top B-school, all full credit courses are designed with 20 contact hours with the faculty, informs Masters’ Union. Its curriculum relies heavily on the students’ ability to appear for the class after reviewing pre-reads, at-home assignments and participating in the course activities actively. “Even though the core courses offered at Masters’ Union are similar to other schools, the classes and evaluations follow active learning pedagogies and focus on outcome-based learnings in addition to the Socratic method of teaching,” says Pratham Mittal.

Masters’ Union says its curriculum has a dual focus on technology and management. Why is this important and how is this achieved, we asked Masters’ Union. “Given how technology has disrupted the workforce, a traditional business programme that fails to integrate the inseparable worlds of business and technology would soon be obsolete. A strong tech focus in our curriculum stems from the very need gap that we are trying to solve i.e., to prepare students for a rapidly evolving workspace,” says Masters’ Union.

Another unique feature of the Masters' Union offering is the large number of electives it offers. In total, more than 85 electives are offered, thus giving students the chance to construct a tailor-made postgraduate programme that fits their personal and professional goals. “An individualized curriculum helps our students choose an outcome path that works best for them, they can pivot their career to a high-growth industry, choose to startup on their own, or catapult their role and package in their previously chosen industry,” says Masters’ Union.

But how does Masters’ Union pack so much in just a 16-month course? “We encapsulate the best global practices in management education through an accelerated pedagogical approach. Designed to be a fast-paced academic experience, it includes 12 months of rigorous academic

training in core areas and industry concentrations with a three-to-four-month period of internship and industry immersion,” says Masters’ Union.

3. Practitioner-led Hands-on Pedagogy, Focused on Experiential Learning
Laying out the pedagogical philosophy, Masters’ Union says, “We observed that in the Indian higher education ecosystem, medical schools have doctors teaching students and in law school, one gets guidance from practicing lawyers. However, business schools are yet to see this immersion. Most traditional faculty might be unequipped to do complete justice to the industry’s point of view.”

The key feature of experiential learning is an active application of theories and frameworks learnt in the classroom. Through activities like building an e-commerce store, ideating and testing a startup idea, building a minimum viable product (MVP); students learn to face real-life challenges that go beyond the scope of theoretical knowledge. When students set up e-commerce stores as a part of their dropshipping challenge in Term 1, they navigated problems across communications, marketing, product returns, logistics, and payments. Over and above studying marketing in the classroom setting, the content creator challenge helped students explore and navigate contemporary forms of marketing that rely heavily on influencers and social media optimization. By creating and distributing their content for maximum reach they get a front-row seat to what works and what doesn’t and the linkage between sales and content. 

Masters’ Union ensures that students gain familiarity with technology through outclass challenges and weekend hackathons including:

• Martech Hackathon
• Blockchain Hackathon
• Metaverse Hackathon
• Edtech Hackathon
• Consulting Hackathon
• Blockchain Hackathon
• Data Science Hackathon

Internships play an important role in the pedagogical mix of Masters’ Union. The duration of their internship is 3-4 months, when students can continue their studies remotely. The format offered by most organizations is an internship which leads to a PPO or a pre-placement offer. Students who are looking to pivot from pre-MBA roles aim to get into their aspirational domains by doing internships in the relevant industries and domains.

Not just exams & quizzes, but measuring ARPU & EBITA for grades!
All in-class courses are evaluated through hands-on activities like working on actual data, analysing company reports and presentations to industry experts etc. “Our goal is to remove the emphasis on traditional exams and quizzes and move towards a practitioner based, experiential pedagogy with an increased focus on learning business by running business,” says Masters’ Union. So, from the dropshipping challenge to the Venture Initiation Programme, students move from term to term setting up new businesses as a part of their outclass academic component. They are evaluated on these projects on the basis of their revenue, ARPU, branding & marketing strategy and more! This actually constitutes a component of the students’ overall CGPA.

4. Practitioners collaborate with Resident Faculty for holistic learning
One of the key USPs of Masters’ Union is that the classes are conducted by CXOs and industry experts, ensuring that students are exposed to real-life challenges from the technology and business world. However, a good thing is that these practitioners do not teach in isolation and without an academic connection. At Masters’ Union these practitioners work alongside academicians to ensure that key learning objectives are delivered to the students while sharing insights and case studies from their workplace.

So, in some ways, students engage and interact with their future recruiters. This is a mutually beneficial relationship between industry and academia. On the one hand, recruiters get to communicate the challenges of their work environments, discuss problem statements and solution scenarios directly with students, helping them get acquainted with the specific realities of various industries, on the other, students get a very clear picture of the skills and know-how required to excel in specific roles and companies. 

In total there are more than 100 CXOs from leading companies like McKinsey and Morgan Stanley who are regularly engaged in teaching at Masters’ Union. Here is a peak at some of them. 

Practitioners from India’s top companies teach at Masters’ Union 

Sr No	Practitioner	Designation	Teaching Area
1	Mr. Rajat Mathur	MD, Morgan Stanley	Right v/s Wrong? People Decisions
2	Mr. Alok Saraogi	Former Country Manager, Amazon	Building Ecommerce Businesses
3	Ms. Avani Davda	Former CEO, Tata Starbucks	Setting up Successful JVs
4	Mr. Manoj Kohli	Country Head, SoftBank	Mapping the Future of the Energy Sector
5	Dr. Shashi Tharoor	Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha	Diplomacy and Communications
6	Mr. Harshil Mathur	CEO & Co-Founder at Razorpay	Designing Modern Fintech
7	Mr. Aakash Gupta	Partner, McKinsey	Peak Performance
8	Mr. Vaibhav Gupta	Lead Product Manager, MakeMyTrip	Product Engineering, Execution and Automation

Masters’ Union is careful to balance practitioners with academics, although it has a slight bias towards practitioners. When asked about the faculty mix, they said, “Some courses are entirely conducted by academicians and some are entirely conducted by industry practitioners. If we look at the entire programme, the division is 40/60 in favour of the practitioners.”

3.1 Academics from IIMA, IIMC, IIMB, ISB co-teach
Apart from practitioner-masters, courses at Masters’ Union are co-taught by academic faculties who bring in the aspect of theoretical rigor to learning a topic or subject. This is especially relevant for core management courses which form a strong foundation for students to build upon. The current academic faculty not only include PhDs from leading B-schools in India including IIM-A, IIM-B and IIM C but also those who have studied at Harvard and Tufts.

All courses delivered by industry practitioners are co-designed with academic faculty. This ensures that all the courses have clear learning objectives and all pre-reads, class exercises and evaluations are conducted in line with these objectives. “The presence and intervention by academic faculty ensures that the rigor and objective of the curriculum is not compromised,” says Masters’ Union. Here are the details of the different types of faculty-members engaged at Masters’ Union.

Faculty Type	Definition	Nos	Notable Names
Core faculty	Qualified academic staff members employed on a permanent basis and for whom the institution is the sole or principal employer	20	Dr. Nandini Seth, Faculty & Master-in-Residence; PhD, IIM Bangalore Dr. Vipin Sreekumar, Assistant Professor in the Strategy area at Masters’ Union School of Business. MBA from IIM Udaipur, and a PhD in Strategic Management from IIM Calcutta.
Visiting professors	academic staff that are core faculty at another academic institution and that visit the school to teach	16	Mr. Shad Morris - Professor, MIT Sloan and Ohio State University Dr. Souvik Dutta, Visiting Faculty, IIM Bangalore Dr. Chandradeep Mitta, Visiting Faculty, IIM Calcutta Dr. Rajagopal Raghunathan, Professor of Business, University of Austin, Texas
Practitioner Faculty	defined as teaching staff who are employed on a part-time, occasional basis and for whom the institution is not the primary employer	122	Manoj Kohli, Former Countryhead, SoftBank Dr. Avantika Tomar, Partner, EY Parthenon Mr Aakash Gupta, Partner, Mckinsey Mr Edward W. Rogers, Former Chief Knowledge Officer, NASA Mr. Naveen Munjal, MD, Hero Electric Vehicles
Adjunct faculties	Faculty who teach Internationally at places like George Washington University, Harvard University	10	Dr Mihir Mankad, Professor of Practice, Tufts & Harvard

No “Typical” day at Masters' Union
When MBAUniverse.com asked a few students what a typical day at MU looks like, they almost unanimously said – there is no typical day!

“It is difficult to describe a typical day at Masters’ Union because no two days end up being exactly the same. We expect 2-3 classes per day of 120 minutes each, said a student. He added, that apart from their classes, students constantly work on their outclass challenges such as Dropshipping, Content Creator challenge, the Venture Initiation Program, Startup Weekends, and more. Masters’ Union also holds a variety of hackathons throughout the year, in areas of tech including AI/ Blockchain, Martech, Metaverse, Blockchain, Agritech, etc. Apart from their classes students also engage with and learn from a variety of industry leaders through the Series C sessions which include top speakers like Ashneer Grover, Rajan Anandan, Ghazal Alagh, and more. 

5. Campus Located in the Heart of Business
It is said that ambience is part of the pedagogical mix, and facilitates learning in a big way. That’s why storied B-schools like Harvard or IIM-A have a particular approach to campus location and infrastructure.

However, unlike traditional B-schools which are often located on the outskirts of cities, the Masters’ Union campus is located in the beating heart of business in Gurgaon, in a bustling business district in Delhi NCR. Their campus is surrounded by the offices of companies like EY, BCG, Bank of America, etc.

Founder Pratham Mittal informs that the location was part of a well thought out strategy. “Our campus location is unique! Not only do our students travel to classes with their future recruiters, but it also becomes extremely convenient for them to network and find the right mentors, right on campus. Secondly, for C-suite executives who work in these offices, it is quite easy to come and take classes at Masters’ Union because they are just an elevator ride away,” says Mittal.

So, will Masters’ Union continue to chart its own path with a super-focus on industry-needs, or will it participate in other reputation building initiatives like Research, Rankings and International Accreditation? Not to be left behind, Masters’ Union is focusing on Research and Accreditation. All in-house faculties have independent research activities with the aim of publishing in top-quality journals. Since 100% of the core faculty members have PhDs in management, the focus of their research aims at providing conceptual, theoretical solutions to contemporary industry relevant problems.

We also learn that Masters’ Union has recently become a member of EFMD, the body that grants the prestigious EQUIS accreditation. They are also in the process of becoming members of the AACSB and the AMBA network. This will be followed by participation in international rankings in the near future.

So, it seems that Masters’ Union doesn’t want to leave any stone unturned in its quest to be an innovative B-school that offers Day 1, industry-ready, professionals who have been exposed to cutting edge curriculum delivered through experiential learning by acclaimed Masters in their fields. If this model works, traditional B-schools will have an India-specific template to follow. We will keep a watch as this new start-up gains momentum.