“CHOOSE WHERE YOU WANT TO BE WORKING AND WHERE YOU WANT YOUR NETWORK TO BE”
Sensing a gap in healthy nutritious snacks for children in the Indian market, Farah Nathani Menzies and Shreya Lamba joined hands to launch The Mumum Co in 2017 that makes preservative and colour-free melties and bars for children. Both young mothers claim that their MBA degrees, the learning from campus life and their corporate careers prepared them to ideate, strategise and launch their venture. For Menzies, who holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, US, the wide scope of subjects such as technology, consumer marketing and finance and the pressing need to make decisions with limited information, gave her the skills that are needed for a start-up business. For Lamba, the student network from 60 different nations and courses such as entrepreneurship and the strategic thinking at INSEAD, France, equipped her with business skills and a strong network.
Experience Matters
“A course on self assessment was most impactful because such experiences open up depths, understand strengths and weaknesses,” says Lamba. For Menzies, it was a classroom exercise that changed her perspective. “We had to write a letter to our class at our hypothetical 10-year reunion. We wrote these fun ones but when they read out real letters, they were very sobering. The dichotomy of young people filled with optimism and realism taught me to have a strong balance and decide how I want to live the next 10 years of my life,” she says.