a product, source suppliers, build a storefront and run paid acquisition campaigns. The market tells them whether their proposition works. In Content Creation, students build a real audience against a defined target, with engagement data determining what holds attention. Food Labs applies the same logic to physical products and hospitality, where consumer behaviour can diverge sharply from what desktop research has suggested. In addition, these shorter sprints feed into a year‑long Venture Initiation Programme, taking students from problem discovery and customer validation to a demo day held in front of more than 150 venture capital firms and angel investors. The student-run Masters’ Union Investment Fund extends the same principle to capital allocation: students debate assumptions and commit real money under mentor guidance rather than managing a hypothetical portfolio. The distinction is important. Experiential learning is learning in a situation where the world gets a vote. A customer can refuse to buy, an audience can refuse to watch and an investor can refuse to fund – the outcome cannot be edited to fit the answer the student expected to get. That is what makes the Outclass programme so much more than a collection of projects. It gives students something conventional coursework often cannot: evidence of how they behave when their assumptions meet reality. Some of that evidence has already travelled beyond the classroom. Nexera Health, a healthcare concierge for corporates; MemoTag, an AI platform supporting care for the elderly; and Bullspree, a stock-trading platform built around game mechanics all began as student ventures at Masters’ Union. Several have since raised institutional funding and a handful of founders have pitched on Shark Tank India. Just recently, Tanay Lohia, a graduate of the school’s post-graduate programme (equivalent to an MBA) in technology & business management raised
teaching hours; full-time faculty anchor the academic core and account for close to a third; while visiting academics from prestigious overseas institutions make up the remainder. The mix matters because experiential learning is only as credible as the people creating the experience. A live business problem taught entirely as a classroom simulation is still a simulation. The person teaching it should, wherever possible, know what happens when the decision leaves the classroom. What pitch competitions can’t prove The second decision was to change what students spend their time doing. A case competition or summer project can be useful but they remain bounded experiences. At some point, the exercise ends, the judging happens and everyone goes home. This isn’t what happens in the real world of work. This disconnect guides Masters’ Union’s suite of Outclass programmes. In these, students are asked to make decisions against conditions they cannot fully control, with outcomes that provide evidence of whether those decisions worked. In the Dropshipping Challenge, for example, they identify
“Taking merit seriously requires building an institution around evidence of what a graduate can really do”
18 Business Impact • ISSUE 5 • 2026
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