Ranbir is the co-founder of the contemporary business school, Oneday MBA, which offers entrepreneurial people the opportunity to launch their own business whilst earning a fully accredited MBA degree in the subject. Running chiefly on the methodology of appointing the relevant experienced mentor to the aspiring student according to the business ideas pitched by the latter during the application process, the predominantly online institution “teaches through direct contact with successful entrepreneurs, building businesses from the ground up – instead of an MBA taught by academic professors, you can pave your way in the business world relying specifically on your skills applied in real-time rather than taking exams after lots of reading.” In short, solely focussing on the practicality of running a business, Oneday establishes itself as the first of its kind to truly facilitate entrepreneurship.
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Indeed, this is likely why it has grown quickly to be in the top 30 most attended business schools in the world by student headcount, akin to top traditional names such as London Business School: “the types of people who come to us want passionately to start their own enterprise,” Ranbir elaborated, “and we give them the chance to earn a degree in business simply by doing it. You may attend conventional business school if you are looking for a career in banking, accounting, consulting etc. with top firms in those sectors but you will learn little on how to effectively create your own company.” An earnest businessman, Ranbir has been a budding entrepreneur himself, having created the health and fitness app, Sweatcoin, when he was just a teen. “I made the bold but dangerous move of choosing not to pursue higher education because I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and couldn’t find any education for it,” he shared: “I have always operated on the principal that my time is not for sale and wanted to be my own boss from a young age. However, I couldn’t find any place that would teach me how. I ended up trying out a few business ideas before teaming up with a few collaborators to eventually create Sweatcoin which scaled up to having hundreds and millions of users worldwide. By the time I was 25 years old, I realised society had still not provided a satisfactory solution for learning entrepreneurship – I thought it was a good time to launch a platform that did.”
Ranbir then subverts the institutional model of teaching entirely to offer deserving individuals the chance to become an authority where talented hard workers are the ones who are sought after by the industry instead of absurdly having to pay to prove themselves. Having grown up on a council estate in Feltham in West London, the co-founder commented that he “very much wanted to provide financial independence for his family, living life on my own terms where it was not dictated by another. In this sense, the motivation to do well was inbuilt – a lot of the time, people view coming from a low-income background as negative, but it’s always been a massive positive for me, giving me natural drive that you can’t buy.” Navigating personal struggle, Ranbir remedied a social pitfall to newly forge the concept of thorough training in entrepreneurship. Indeed, he defines a strong business idea as typically “addressing the depth of the pain point being solved for the respective user: this means solving an issue that people deeply care about as opposed to merely creating product that is ‘nice to have’. This is what differentiates the potential for more successful businesses over others. You won’t spend money on what I term as ‘paper-cut problems’ rather on what is more urgent or the equivalent of a broken leg.”
Ranbir also drew on one of the most important experiential lessons he learned from starting his breakthrough app, Sweatcoin, before his creation of a whole organisation to explain how to advance in the business world: “the value of resilience. I had to persist for two to three years along with the other two guys with whom I was working before our idea really took off. We had to keep experimenting and eventually some of our ideas started to take off: we topped the app store in 66 countries and were number one in the UK Appstore above even Instagram etc. This is possible to do: when we look at those who achieve these apparently massive feats, it sounds so scary from far away; we feel they must be extraordinary in some way, but by going through that cycle of being open-minded and flexible in the pursuit of an aim nothing does separate you from greatness apart from an attitude.” Finally, Ranbir demonstrates that the secret to thriving at business is the same concept that underlies living a fulfilling life: the ability to not only aptly but also purposefully evolve. The ethos behind his innovative business school, Oneday MBA, is as much a progressive philosophy: “it’s not about being centred on the idea of making lots of money – that’s never been what has appealed to me. Rather, the incentive that you can wake up everyday and live it on your terms, solving problems you care deeply about, and earn a living as a bi-product. In fact, a highlight for me has been seeing the launch of many lifestyle businesses that have allowed people to be very comfortable. You don’t have to be as enormous as say Meta, to have really made it. The goal is to have the freedom to explore.”
Do you have any role models?
Yes, an archetypal one: Steve Jobs! He wasn’t into entrepreneurship because he simply wanted to make a huge profit – he loved what he did and built tech as if an artist - his paintbrush was an interest in design to build a business. Similarly, I have never needed much money or fancy things to survive – my drive is the chance of a life that I can live to the fullest.Do you have a particularly favourite highlight in your journey?Yes – I was on the train the other day and saw an advert that looked familiar: an enterprise that had launched with OneDayMBA. This founder started a health and fitness app specifically for adult men called Metal, partnering with Bear Grylls who is a presenter on the BBC. Our entrepreneur had started from scratch, and we matched him with a mentor who had launched that sort of app before – the business eventually raised £2.2 million pounds in venture capital and was the app of the day on the UK’s app store.
You also enjoy travel and snowboarding. Do you have comment on how this complements your business?
I love to keep trying what’s new and adapting to challenges, especially when it seems impossible. It is the act of chasing the goal that is most rewarding – the richness of the journey so to speak. I extend this idea to everything – from holidays to choices in the way I dress. I enjoy being daring in approaching life – that way you know you’re really experiencing it.You are making entrepreneurship more accessible by taking it into your own hands: can this be considered a form of grassroots empowerment?It is an amazing vehicle in the world that’s available to us. If you look at the kind of massive impact entrepreneurship has, it is very effective in progressing society: entrepreneurs can move forward movements such as climate change and sustainability where affecting that political change higher up is harder. Alongside freedom fighters or activism, it is a strong way of achieving a shift in society.W: https://www.oneday.org/To find out more: https://www.oneday.org/uk/oneday-mba-reviews
