SWEET AND STRONG

► VINEETA SINGH made news as an IIMA grad in 2006, when she turned down a `1-crore job offer from Deutsche Bank. Back then, it was unheard of for global investment banks to offer associate-level roles to IIM freshers. The Deutsche Bank offer was, in fact, on par with those made to grads of global B-schools like Harvard. However, 23-year-old Singh, a self-confessed “fan” of Steve Jobs and Richard Branson in those days, stuck to her goal of becoming an entrepreneur. Sixteen years on, as one of the most promising internet entrepreneurs of the country today, she—along with her husband Kaushik Mukherjee—runs SUGAR Cosmetics, a D2C beauty brand valued upwards of $500 million. “I would never have had the guts to start up had it not been for my B-school education. I went to IIMA because I had an ambition to start a company. It was the only B-school at that time to offer a programme on leadership and entrepreneurship,” she says.

Singh graduated in 2007 after having been a top-performing student, a popular intercollege badminton player, and the Head of IIMA’s Alumni Cell. She holds each experience dear to her heart. “My co-founders in both the businesses I started [SUGAR and FabBag], my husband, and some of the most key people in my life… I met at IIMA. Everyone was inspirational and had the ability to hustle,” she says. IIMA taught her to take risks. “I learnt how moonshots can make a difference to your entire career trajectory.” Today, not only is she a distinguished alumna, but IIMA also recognised her success by instituting a case study on SUGAR in its marketing programme. “The ‘case method’ of teaching allows IIMA to not be as outdated as some of the other colleges. And for a 60-year-old institution to be in touch with the times is phenomenal,” she says.

But is there something she wished Bschool had taught her? “Well, no institution in India teaches you [how] to deal with failure,” she says. “And those life skills often end up mattering more than the technical skills.” Singh also laments the lack of real-world exposure in the IIM curriculum. “There wasn’t as much focus on creating businesses, selling stuff, meeting customers, etc.,” she says, adding that institutes need to figure out how businesses of the future can be built. “Bring in courses on fintech, influencer marketing and backend infrastructure. It cannot be just brand, brand, brand.”

One of her role models, Falguni Nayar, is a fellow IIMA alumna. “Just seeing a woman from your college go on to build a fantastic business is amazing,” she says of Nayar, who founded Nykaa, which today competes with SUGAR in the online beauty commerce space.