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Asia School of Business

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Innovation

Category: Student Experience, Action Learning, MBA

Ghanaian-born Awal Suddeeq never sits still for too long. The serial entrepreneur has multiple startups to his name and is always looking for ways to burn up his entrepreneurial energy. After launching a natural cosmetics manufacturing business, Kasi Naturals, and leading youth-empowerment programs in Ghana, he went in search of ways to hone his startup skills.

He’s now using his MBA from Asia School of Business (ASB) to run companies across Africa and Asia.

Why MBA: Asia School of Business

During his time as an early entrepreneur, one thing played on Awal’s mind. “I quickly realized that I didn’t have enough business knowledge, concepts, or frameworks to understand what I was doing,” he says It became clear to Awal (pictured) that an MBA would be a step in the right direction. He was initially drawn to ASB—a Kuala Lumpur-based business school formed in partnership with the MIT Sloan School of Management—due to its Action Learning (AL) curriculum. 

AL is a core part of the ASB MBA program that sees students undertake five projects across different companies and countries, one of which is specific to entrepreneurship. “To have the opportunity to try many things in different industries made me feel like the program was crafted for me as an entrepreneur,” Awal notes.

The ASB MBA further appealed to him when he heard about the school’s test-optional policy, which waives the GRE or GMAT test requirement for students from underrepresented socio-economic backgrounds. Instead, ASB considers things like previous work experiences and career motivations. “The MBA admissions policy showed me that this was going to be an unconventional path because [ASB] wasn’t doing what every other business school was doing.”

Delving into entrepreneurship from new angles

On the 20-month ASB MBA, Awal was keen to get stuck into the AL projects and apply the entrepreneurial theory and frameworks from his MBA courses, such as Entrepreneurial Strategy, in a real-world setting. He gained experience working on a go-to-market strategy within the digital telecommunications industry, as well as working for an e-commerce company.

But it was in the Entrepreneurship Trek where Awal thrived, working with a team to create a brand, test the product, and create a prototype. Awal says that working in diverse teams improved his soft (‘Smart’) skills, such as his ability to leverage multiple perspectives. 70% of international students typically make up the ASB MBA. “The project and the training received on the MBA helped me to feel like anything was possible when it comes to entrepreneurship,” he notes.

Awal even had the chance to enhance his own business through the Entrepreneurship Trek, part of the ASB MBA’s Summer Associate Program (SAP), where he travelled to Ghana to implement his learnings from the ASB MBA. In Ghana, he conducted content analysis and interviews to inform his market research, enhancing his hard (‘Sharp’) technical skills, such as data-driven decision making.

Informed by his research, he launched another natural cosmetics brand named Avela, enabling him to enter new markets like Senegal. He credits the ASB and visiting MIT faculty—who lead certain courses like entrepreneurship and innovation—with helping to boost his business ten-fold. “I was able to apply the marketing analytics tools I’d learned [at ASB] directly to my business and see the value of my company increasing multiple times.”

The power of MBA networking

With industry experience under his belt, Awal feels more confident than ever about his entrepreneurial projects. During the MBA, he met the CEO and co-founder of Appsaya, a Malaysian-based firm that creates business networking platforms. Post-MBA, Awal worked with the company to offer business advice but quickly went from that to leading the company’s strategy as vice president of strategy and business development.

Awal is also a co-founder of Wasabih, a professional networking community for the Halal and Islamic economy, in Malaysia. Alongside his co-founder, who is also the founder and CEO of Appsaya, Awal advises on anything from a business’ next steps to deciding which companies to partner with “Before my MBA, I knew nothing about strategy or business management, but ASB has completely changed this,” he says.

He adds that he’s still in touch with ASB faculty, including the dean of ASB and several ASB and MIT professors, who offer guidance whenever he needs it. “Sometimes you need somebody to brainstorm an idea with and you need somebody to believe in you.” “Building that kind of relationship with ASB faculty and my colleagues at large is really helping me with my entrepreneurial ventures,” says Awal.

Read the full article here.
This article was originally published on BusinessBecause, a network helping MBA students make connections before, during and after their MBA.

What do businesses need to know to transform their financial landscape and ensure they won’t lag behind? How can we build a more sustainable financial ecosystem that creates value and contributes toward a stable financial ecosystem? Dr. Anella Munro, Professor of Economics at Asia School of Business in partnership with MIT Sloan Management speaks with Ibrahim Sani on this, and more.

To view the replay of the broadcast, visit Astro AWANI.

Established in 2015 from a partnership between MIT Sloan School of Management and Bank Negara Malaysia, Asia School of Business has been specializing in business administration-related courses like full-time MBAs and executive education classes for students from Malaysia and globally. We ask Professor Charles Fine, the dean of the school to talk about how the school has weathered the pandemic and where the future lies in executive education.

“We want people who are extraordinary but also unconventional – they are not looking for the traditional path. We’ve had students who have gone into traditional post-MBA roles, but we also have had people… who’ve gone into social enterprises and entrepreneurship.” – Professor Charles Fine

Listen to the full interview below.

American MBA grad Brian Schwartz has always been attracted to the global portability of a business degree. Now he’s seeing the benefits of a global education in his latest role as global marketing and sales operations manager for marketing tech firm AdRoll, a division of NextRoll.

It was Brian’s experience studying in South East Asia (SEA) during his Asia School of Business (ASB) MBA that armed him with a unique skillset to stand out in a competitive business environment. From learning to lead consulting projects across Asia to understanding intercultural management, the school’s MBA primed him for his new career.

Swapping the US for an MBA in Asia

Swapping cultures and continents for an MBA is a bold move. But for Brian the decision to swap the US for Asia was a no-brainer. Having previously spent a year in Dublin as part of his undergraduate degree, he notes that he “already had an appreciation for the global nature of the business landscape but had no exposure to Asia yet.” Before the MBA, Brian worked in sales operations at a US-based startup.

He adds that he was driven to pursue the MBA at Asia School of Business because of his desire to experience new industries and fields of work in SEA, an exciting and fast-moving region. And when he learned about ASB’s connections with MIT Sloan School of Management and the fact that he could learn from MIT professors both at ASB’s Kuala Lumpur-based campus and MIT, his decision was made.

Moreover, the school was established in collaboration with MIT Sloan by the Central Bank of Malaysia in 2015—for Brian, this was also a standout feature of the business school. “I’m attracted to startups for the opportunity to make a real impact and imprint on the company or institution, so ASB presented that opportunity, but with the safety net of being backed by two impressive founders,” he says.

Action Learning projects and sampling new industries in Asia

ASB’s Action Learning (AL) curriculum offers students the chance to partake in immersive consulting projects with companies across South East Asia. Brian says the AL projects were a real standout factor of ASB’s MBA. He dipped his toes into cutting-edge business topics like the Internet of Things (IoT) at Maxis, a major telecoms provider in Malaysia, advised on supply chain management for the hospitality industry, and supported e-commerce fulfillment in Myanmar.

But it wasn’t just the work experience that Brian valued about the projects. There was the additional bonus of the cultural exposure and ability to travel throughout the region. “You could have class in Kuala Lumpur during the week, head off to an AL project in Myanmar the next few weeks, then pop over to Bangkok for a symposium, and end with a trip to the Thai islands. This is hard to replicate at many institutions,” he asserts.

By working on these diverse projects, Brian sharpened his technical skills by using innovative digital tools like the IoT. However, he remarks that the ‘smart’ skills he learned through working with a diverse mix of teammates across AL projects are often more valuable in business. ‘Smart’ skills are those skills that require diplomacy and intelligence as they help employees to thrive in the workplace.

“Anybody can try to learn a new workflow or process, but if you can’t communicate, don’t have humility, or lack emotional intelligence and maturity, you’re going to have a real tough time in today’s workplace,” he notes.

From ASB’s MBA to a global management career

The ASB MBA is diverse. On average, 70% of the class consists of international students and there are 26 different nationalities represented. Students come from an array of industry and functional backgrounds too. “When you expand from just diversity of experience to geographic diversity with classmates from Mexico to Kazakhstan, you get richer perspectives and discussions that ensure that there is diversity of thought in every class and project,” notes Brian.

He adds that his global exposure made him attractive to his current employer, AdRoll, and he joined the company soon after his MBA. He started in a senior sales operations role focusing on Europe, Middle East & Africa, and the APAC region.

His experience allowed him to later pivot to a global role, where he now manages the company’s worldwide sales and marketing operations from London.  He oversees the operations behind the go-to-market motion, which involves the marketing to sales handoff, and ultimately helps the company hit their revenue goals.

He explains that it was the skillset acquired during the MBA’s Action Learning projects that ultimately built him into a professional capable of launching a global career and managing internationally, across geographies. “I was able to position my time on the ASB MBA as proof of my ability to operate in a global environment with peers from all over the world,” he concludes.

Read the full article here.
This article was originally published on BusinessBecause, a network helping MBA students make connections before, during and after their MBA.

If you’re someone looking for a fast-paced and everchanging career, then South East Asia (SEA) might be your best bet. SEA is one of the largest economic regions globally, with its economy continually growing at a rapid rate, which means there’s an influx of exciting and unique MBA jobs available for challenge-hungry business school grads. Not to mention that the strong levels of English proficiency within countries like Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia ensure that the region attracts a host of international English-speaking grads.

Here are six of the most exciting MBA jobs that you could land in the fast-moving SEA region, and how an MBA in Asia could equip you with the skills to succeed in your career.

1. Security & compliance specialist, tech sector

Since Asia is at the forefront of the tech and digital sector, those looking to work at the cutting edge of industry should look no further. The ASB MBA teaches many tech-based courses such as digital marketing, enabling students to combine their generalist business knowledge with more specialist future-focused skills. With a top-notch business degree, you could launch into an MBA career at Microsoft, one of the leading technology firms globally.

This is exactly what Deepika Mahankali did after her ASB MBA, landing a role as a regional business program manager in the APAC region upon graduation. She’s since moved into a new role as a security and compliance technical specialist at Microsoft. On the MBA, Deepika learned about coding and app development. She was even able to test out an app idea and create a prototype, lending her the experience she would need to build a career at a leading tech company.

2. Head of ESG, oil and gas sector

Many business schools educate students on important topics like sustainability, preparing future business leaders to land MBA jobs that allow them to tackle urgent issues facing the environment. ASB is no different. Through courses in sustainable business and markets, public policies, and sustainability, you’ll learn about the impact of business decisions on the environment and how you can strategize to create a business that’s both profitable and doesn’t contribute to climate change.

After your degree, you might look for MBA jobs in ESG—an evaluation metric that considers a company’s performance related to environmental, social, and governance factors. This could involve anything from working in infrastructure to advising on responsible investment. You could follow in the footsteps of ASB MBA grad Mathias Varming. He’s now head of ESG at oil and energy company Ping Petroleum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he’s helping his company to move towards the Net Zero agenda by tackling greenhouse gas emissions.

3. Product marketing lead, unicorn startup

SEA is home to an abundance of homegrown unicorn startups, like Singaporean-born companies Matrixport and Lazada, making it a great location to sharpen your knowledge about what it takes to start a business. Matthew Osofisan is one US grad from the Asia School of Business (ASB) who used their MBA to build a career working for the super app Grab, a Malaysian-born unicorn startup providing ride-hailing, delivery, and financial services.

As a product marketing lead, Matthew improves the billion-dollar startup’s customer experience at Grab’s Singapore-based headquarters. The 20-month ASB MBA program dedicates several courses to entrepreneurship, covering things like evolutionary entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial strategy.

Meanwhile, through their intensive AL curriculum, you’ll be able to try out your entrepreneurial skills when undertaking market research to create a profitable product, receiving feedback from ASB lecturers experienced in forming or supporting businesses.

4. Head of blockchain technology, fintech sector

The fintech scene in Asia is going from strength to strength due to the vast amount of foreign investment bolstering the sector in the region. In 2019 alone, around $1.6 billion was invested in fintech startups across South East Asia. ASB teaches courses on financial analytics and innovation. Moreover, since ASB is partnered with the MIT Sloan School of Management, students also learn from a mix of both ASB and MIT faculty who are experts in digital transformation and finance.

ASB alum, Varun Singhi, used his degree to become head of blockchain technology at Stealth Mode, a Malaysian fintech startup, where he’s developing Malaysia’s first regulated and compliant digital asset exchange service. During his degree, he was prepared for his MBA career when he worked on AL projects at an Indonesian startup and a commercial bank in Vietnam. “Action learning allows you to think about how you change yourself in a dynamic environment,” says Varun.

5. Operations & business development manager, real estate

The real estate sector has seen considerable growth across Asia and, as a result, offers varied and exciting MBA jobs. Nigerian native, Dare Oluwajuyitan, used his ASB MBA to ‘triple-jump’—changing function, sector, and location—into an operations and business development manager role at a real estate firm based in Thailand.

Dare dipped his toes into private equity, television, and real estate throughout his ASB AL projects. However, he set his sights on a real estate career after becoming interested in property technology, or proptech, which involves using technology to make transactions more seamless and inform building design.

ASB MBA grad Dare found an exciting MBA job in the Thai real estate sphere ©Dare Oluwajuyitan

6. Chief of staff, travel and e-commerce

An MBA offers the perfect way to brush up on your managerial and leadership skills in a stimulating environment while gaining exposure to new business industries. On the Asia School of Business (ASB) MBA, you’ll work on five consulting projects across Asia through the Action Learning (AL) curriculum, building your knowledge of the business landscape while applying theory from the course to real-world situations.

Yizhen Fung, an ASB alumna, describes these projects as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of her ASB experience. She leveraged her experience of working at a Thai bank, a Hanoi-based beverage company, and a Hong Kong beauty company to land a role as chief of staff at AirAsia.com—an international leader in aviation and one of ASB’s corporate partners.

“If you dissect the skills I needed to thrive in a volatile environment, it’s the ability to learn and unlearn quickly, to adapt to what a new environment needs,” she notes, explaining that it was these very skills that she learned throughout her ASB AL projects.

ASB alumna Yizhen is thriving in her MBA job at Air Asia

It’s clear that whether you want to launch a dynamic new career in tech or tap into the ongoing need for expert real estate management or innovative startups, there are plenty of MBA jobs available in the rapidly growing SEA region. An MBA might just be your ticket to getting there.

Read the full article here.
This article was originally published on BusinessBecause, a network helping MBA students make connections before, during and after their MBA.

The International University of Malaya-Wales is proud to announce the first International Academic Conference 2021 (IAC2021), a virtual event taking place between 26th-28th October 2021. IAC 2021 is the coming together of researchers and industry. It’s a place to share groundbreaking ideas, discoveries and experiences on a variety of thought leadership topics covered in the conference theme, “Digitalisation in Transformation: Bridging Academia & Industry”.

The conference will include speakers from Asia School of Business, including Prof. Charles Fine, President, CEO and Dean, and Prof. Loredana Padurean, Senior Associate Dean, alongside other prominent figures from industry and academia.Members of the public are invited to join the event at no cost.

To register for your free seats, visit: https://iumw.edu.my/iac2021-overview

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has hit some industries harder than others, such as the aviation/aerospace industry. Looking back at the impact of Covid-19 on the industry, I had the opportunity to hear firsthand from Yizhen Fung, Head of Strategic Partnerships at AirAsia super app, through an insightful session organized by Professor Melati, Assistant Professor of Economics at the Asia School of Business (ASB), as part of the course Platforms, Auctions and Competition through Games.

Leverage the Full Potential of What’s Already There

“We are playing the real game of snakes and ladders because 19 years ago, AirAsia started with two aircrafts which gradually climbed up to a fleet of 280 aircrafts. Now, we are back at two aircrafts flying.” – Yizhen Fung. AirAsia saw the crisis as an opportunity to use the downtime in flying caused by the pandemic to leverage its strength, focusing on developing new non airline revenue streams in the key areas of e-commerce, fintech and logistics.

Yizhen explained the tactics that AirAsia’s leadership team instigated to align the company’s vision, and steer the business, and chart a new technology roadmap during these challenging times, while keeping the people’s morale high. As a passionate strategist, Yizhen shared about how AirAsia utilized data-driven strategies to leverage its digital ecosystem of 75 million users.

The AirAsia super app provides a simpler, faster, and more convenient user experience. The platform features more than 15 different products and services under six main categories including travel, edutech, delivery, health, fintech, and media. “What we’ve done is that we’ve leveraged on our unique assets.

As an airline, we have longstanding business relationships with some of the largest cosmetic companies in the world. Therefore, we were able to obtain great prices for beauty products. In addition, we have thousands of cabin crew and grooming instructors who have a great followership on Instagram.” Yizhen also shared about the secret sauce of how AirAsia Beauty took off by utilizing AirAsia’s current assets and emphasizing inclusivity.

An Always-Nailing Culture

At ASB, Professor Charles Fine and Professor Loredana Padurean have developed and mapped out a framework phrased as “Nailing, Scaling, Sailing”, a concept that highlights the different stages within the entrepreneurial life cycle. As Yizhen affirmed, the culture in AirAsia is always one of “Nailing”, which emphasizes on continuous innovation.

Due to the innovation in non-airline digital businesses, AirAsia’s super app posted a 45% year-on-year (YoY) increase in its revenue to RM10 million in the first quarter of 2021, supported by the solid growth of products and services available on the platform. AirAsia’s super app is now considered one of the region’s top three online travel agencies (OTA).

According to Yizhen, AirAsia is constantly innovating and looking for gaps within the market, with the focus of serving the underserved. For example, AirAsia managed to onboard multiple small, independent businesses on its delivery platform because these businesses are often neglected by other platform players.

She added that without the nailing culture, AirAsia wouldn’t have been able to remain true to their promise of delivering high quality service to the underserved, which AirAsia has accomplished by providing affordable opportunities for flight travel, stay-at-home leisure, shopping, eating, and upskilling.

Conclusion – A Super App’s Future Growth

In just a few years, the creation of super apps have become an emerging trend in many markets. The key strategy to develop successful super apps is to offer convenience and simplicity for customers.  Malaysia’s delivery business market is highly competitive and is dominated by popular and established stalwarts like GrabFood and FoodPanda. Serving the underserved and neglected, AirAsia focuses more on small restaurants for its food delivery business.

To add on, AirAsia charges lower commission fee than FoodPanda and Grab, further supporting new and smaller restaurants. Ultimately, the question remains: Will this business model be sustainable in the long run? Yizhen highlighted the market’s healthy growth and traction, confident that AirAsia Food would gain sizeable market share from its competitors in the future.

With a smile on its logo, Amazon is a powerful data engine leading radical innovation at the forefront of a data-driven era. As an MBA student, I had the opportunity to listen to a guest talk given by ASB alumnus, Ricardo Acosta, who shared his journey of working at Amazon as part of the MBA course, ‘Platforms, Auctions, & Competition Through Games’. Ricardo first joined Didi Chuxing after graduating from the ASB MBA program in 2019.

Since then, he has been with Amazon Mexico City for more than a year as Group Manager under the Amazon Advertising business (formerly known as Amazon Marketing Services or AMS), an essential pillar of the Amazon ecosystem. Read on for some takeaways I gained from this talk:

Amazon: An omnipresent ecosystem of full-spectrum services that delight customers in different ways

Amazon is well known as one of the largest marketplaces in the world. But Amazon goes beyond e-commerce alone and is also a music, video streaming, games and entertainment, artificial intelligence, and smart device giant. Brands including Kindle and Alexa are all different pieces of Amazon’s commerce business. In 2017, Amazon added Whole Foods into its shopping cart, extending its presence into the offline grocery business. 

By offering a large selection of products and services for customers, the e-commerce platform now enjoys a customer base of 300 million active users. As we learned from platform theory, the thickness of a platform has significant implications on the yields over time. The increasing number of customers helps attract more sellers, creating a reinforcing loop that is critical to the sustainability of the business.

Amazon Advertising’s unique advantage to sellers

Within Amazon’s complex ecosystem, the Amazon Advertising business plays a critical role in connecting brands with consumers. Amazon Advertising is a demand-side platform that enables advertisers to buy products programmatically on and off the site. Amazon’s leadership position in e-commerce goes hand in hand with the high competition among its sellers, translating into their growing expenditure in ads on marketplaces.

Sellers will have to strategize their ad plan to put themselves in an advantageous position and achieve the best ROI possible. Compared with Facebook and Google, Amazon advertising’s unique advantage is its presence in a diversified product portfolio in Amazon’s ecosystem. Amazon is not competing directly against Google as a search engine or Facebook as a social network. Even though Facebook knows a lot of people, Amazon knows exactly who is buying what and is able to report that data back to third-party sellers.

Valuable consumer insights can be collected from the e-commerce platform and its hardware devices such as Fire TV and Alexa, helping sellers optimize their decision-making in campaign design and customer acquisition strategy using data. It is fascinating how all the input from different pieces of the Amazon ecosystem comes into the equation.

It’s all about learning from data

Information about the customers forms an essential part of Amazon’s business. Amazon’s advertising business started about ten years ago when it discovered that people were not only coming to Amazon to shop but also to discover new products. The company realized that there was an interesting business opportunity to help brands make the right choices, even if they do not end up purchasing from Amazon.com.

Around 2018, the international expansion team for ads started to focus on understanding consumer behavior on Amazon.com. When customers come to Amazon and search for a product, the records are kept. Amazon not only collects data from the e-commerce website but also through smart devices. For instance, what music you listen to and what video games you are playing.

Amazon defines a customer as ‘in the market’ when they are actively searching for something. Even if the customer is not ready to buy, Amazon anticipates what the customer might want. Amazon also analyzes how people are searching throughout time. Customer profiles are mapped and categorized as frequent shoppers, gift-givers, new-shopper, etc.

The algorithms will analyze which ads are clicked more and are more likely to be converted into sales. The ads placed helps brands to gain deeper insights about the consumers and make sure that their first options are in the catalog for each search and each person. Ricardo considers Amazon Advertising an important pillar that connects Amazon as a platform with two other sides – the users and the seller brands. Most platforms are two-sided.

When you have three sides or four sides in a multi-sided marketplace, maintaining all these relationships and making them work simultaneously can be challenging. In the context of COVID-19, digital innovation continues to disrupt many industries. Companies in the platform business will need to stay adaptable in the fast-changing environment while constantly adding value to each side of the platform.

As a further evolution of an already innovative curriculum, we are introducing key changes to our MBA program at Asia School of Business. These include greater flexibility in program duration to position students to better capture dynamic career opportunities in Asia, new concentrations in high-demand specializations, and a greater focus on entrepreneurial skillsets.

Flexible Program Duration Geared at Capturing Career Opportunities

Starting with the Class of 2023, full-time MBA students will have the opportunity to complete the full 20-month program which includes electives and optional concentrations – or, to complete the program in an accelerated manner, within 16 months.

This new flexibility is based on the insight and understanding that recruiting cycles in the region are very short, and many employers tend to make hiring decisions over a two to three-month horizon.

 ASB students now have the option to complete their core courses ahead of schedule, giving them more flexibility in their job hunt and positioning them for maximum success in capturing the opportunities presented in this dynamic region.

Concentrations in Finance and Analytics and Supply Chain

Additionally, we’ve introduced options for concentrations in Finance & Analytics and Supply Chain. In the last few years, we have expanded our range of elective course offerings and continued to grow the size of our teaching faculty in response to our students’ diverse needs. Based on student feedback and market demand, we’re excited to now offer specializations in these two disciplines as part of the MBA Certificate.

Greater Focus on Cultivating Entrepreneurial Skills

As an entrepreneurial and innovative business school, we wanted to equip our students for entrepreneurial careers. We believe that entrepreneurial skill sets are essential for every future leader, regardless of whether our graduates end up founding ventures or becoming intrapreneurs. The rate of change in today’s digital and globally interconnected world has brought about increasing uncertainty and the need for innovation and new solutions to solve our most pressing challenges.

With this in mind, we have added into our core curriculum an Entrepreneurship Trek that will span the first four semesters (16 months) and impart crucial entrepreneurial skills through hands-on learning experiences. During this trek, they will ideate, prototype, and eventually pitch their own products/service businesses to mentors, industry leaders, and angel investors, guided by ASB’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC).

Figure 1 Updated MBA Model

Figure 2 Comparison chart of MBA Model

With these key changes to our MBA program, we hope to further advance our students’ post-MBA success and meet the market’s diverse needs for upskilling and talent in this fast-growing region.

As a start-up business school with a vision of delivering premier management education in and for the emerging world, ASB has a lot to prove. The school’s aspirations of combining the best of the East and the West, placing as heavy a focus on Action Learning (experiential learning) as a foundational business theory, and equipping students with future-proof Smart and Sharp skills (skills to work with other people and to work with machines) are lofty indeed.

Having only been around since 2016, ASB has graduated four classes since its inception. Yet despite the school’s young age, it has managed, through strong partnerships and a bold, unconventional marketing approach, to attract a diverse and talented student body that comprises over 70% international students and is almost 50% female.

If building a b-school from scratch was not hard enough, ASB faced even more challenges with the two most recent cohorts (Classes of 2020 and 2021) graduating in the middle of a pandemic. Despite the challenges, the school and students have been resilient with unforeseeable circumstances.

In late 2020, ASB ran a survey among the alumni of the first two cohorts (Classes of 2018 and 2019) to understand how they have been faring, about a year and a half to two and a half years after graduating, amid a pandemic. The survey results were encouraging and have validated the school’s approach to learning – ASB alumni have flourished after graduation. And those graduating students are making waves all over the world in their post-MBA roles. Let’s look at some of the outcomes from our two pioneering classes.

MBA as a launchpad into top tier companies… and more

An overwhelming majority (79%) of alums have chosen a career path with some of the worlds most recognizable global companies and leading Asian players such as AirAsia, Amazon, Grab, LEGO, McKinsey, Samsung, Uber, Novo Nordisk, and Microsoft. The rest of ASB alums have chosen alternate career paths, with a notable amount carrying on the entrepreneurial spirit of ASB and have choosing to venture into entrepreneurship (9%), founding their own startups.

The transformational management education experience has piqued the curiosity of a small but noteworthy minority of who have used the MBA as a launchpad to further their studies (5%) at top institutions such as MIT Sloan School of Management and Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Asia matters everywhere – an MBA with global portability

There are many reasons our students choose an MBA in Asia. Many are excited to be immersed in the local cultures and languages on the frontier of the world’s fastest growing economic region. Some are looking for an adventure on the other side of the globe. But job opportunities for ASB graduates have not been limited only to the Asian region. Today, our graduates are in 35 different locations.

While the majority (53%) are based in Asia, many are based in other locations, reinforcing the value of ASB’s approach to management education and the value of Asian business perspective inside and outside Asia. The ASB MBA is globally portable. ASB has significant representation in all global markets: This includes both opportunities in top firms in advanced economies, as well as high-growth start-ups in emerging economies.

Trusted leaders and advisors to the C-suite and making an impact

Through our Action Learning-based curriculum, and the results of the five projects during the time in the MBA program, ASB graduates are able hit the ground running in any setting.  80% of our alums have been promoted at least once or more within three years from graduation. Over the same period, a quarter of ASB’s alums have been promoted twice.  Our graduates have quickly become influential and are trusted advisors to top leadership, with 24% reporting directly to the C-suite.

Strong salary outcomes outpace top-tier schools

The market has placed a tremendous value on ASB MBA graduates for their ability as change makers and having an impact. They are being rewarded financially as well, achieving annualized salary growth of 13% and 16% in advanced and emerging economies respectively. This vastly outperforms the annualized salary progression of Financial Times Top 100 Global MBA Ranking 2021 in Developing Asia (5.7%), USA (3.3%), and Europe (2.5%).

With COVID-19, the 2020 market is closer to 2018 than 2019 as firms were tightening hiring processes to strengthen businesses in the new normal. Despite this, 94% of the Class of 2020 accepted offers that averaged a still-impressive PPP-adjusted salary of $103,915.

*PPP-adjusted – An approach to measuring the purchasing power of different currencies (salaries) based on the basket of goods that can be purchased in different markets. 

Finance, manufacturing, and consulting stay popular, but tech tops the list

The most popular industry that Classes of 2018 and 2019 graduates have ventured into post-MBA is technology (30%). Graduates have joined prominent technology giants, such as Microsoft and Samsung, as well as rising technology start-ups. Many have transitioned into tech without prior experience in the sector, showing the versatility of the Smart and Sharp skills that the ASB MBA equipped them with.

For example, Rafael from Class of 2020 joined Samsung’s Leadership Development Program upon graduation, making a switch from the auto industry to the technology industry. Meanwhile, Ashley Suelyn from Class of 2020 started her career as an underwriter, holding an Actuarial Science degree, and used her MBA to pivot towards corporate strategy, business development, and project management as the current Chief of Staff of Malaysian startup SOCAR.

Nura Adila Asri from Class of 2019 came from the world of audit and assurance and transitioned into tech startup GoGet, leveraging her previous experience to lead in finance and community management functions. Finance remained to be the second most popular industry (23%) with almost one quarter of graduates accepting roles across various functions. Manufacturing (15%) and consulting (13%) also among the top industries that ASB graduates venture into. Other than these popular industries, graduates are also in e-commerce/retail, energy, education, and pharmaceutical industries.

A transformative experience on multiple dimensions

The ASB MBA is designed to be an immersive and transformative program. Students are physically located in the heart of Southeast Asia, spend a month in Cambridge, Massachusetts at MIT Sloan, and take part in five different applied Action Learning projects with four different employers, with the fifth project being focused on entrepreneurship and new product/service development. This equips them not only with future-proof skills but also a strong and extensive global network.

To date, ASB has worked with . In the Entrepreneurship Trek where students ideate and prototype their own products and services, they pitch and get feedback from a panel of judges from industry. The trek has resulted in some students continuing to work on developing and launching their projects while seeking funding. One of these projects, BlindIn.co, resulted in the student team winning Microsoft’s first virtual AI for Accessibility Hackathon (APAC).

They scored $1,000 in cash prizes, the opportunity to work with Microsoft experts to build their solutions on Microsoft Azure and are now working to have their solution available on the Microsoft marketplace. Beyond reshaping the way students look at their careers, many students have reported the program to be a transformative experience on a personal level as well. Students transform into Smart and Sharp leaders and learn to cultivate strong communication skills, empathy, and cultural awareness.

As a testament to this, in the recent survey, alumni rated the program experience highly. On a 5-point Likert scale, the majority of ASB graduates have rated Action Learning highly in terms of impact on career (4.45). This is followed by a high rating on overall academic experience (4.39), quality of instruction (4.35), quality of faculty (4.29), and overall quality of MBA (4.26). Overall, 94% of graduates said the ASB MBA met or exceeded expectations, and 90% said they would likely or very likely recommend the ASB MBA.