On a recent episode of the Startup Pedia podcast, Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath leaned back in his chair and casually delivered a line that blew up the Internet. “If you’re 25 and doing an MBA today, you must be some kind of an idiot,” he said. The timing couldn’t have been worse. In less than a week, lakhs of students across the country will sit for CAT and other MBA entrance exams, beginning an annual ritual built on years of coaching classes, and family expectations, and the aspiration of a better life. Kamath’s line may have got lost if not for a sharp, steady rebuttal from MBA student Anaheez Patel, who is studying at NYU Stern. Filming a response reel, Patel pushed back saying, “Not everyone wants to be a hustler or entrepreneur. For every outlier who made it without a degree, there are thousands whose careers jumped because of one.” Her video quickly gathered its own momentum, creating a split-screen debate that begged the question — is the MBA degree heading to extinction?

When we speak to her, Patel is even more precise. “The classroom knowledge is honestly the least transformative part of the MBA,” she says. “What matters is the density of opportunities around you — alumni networks that span decades, recruiting pipelines that are exclusive to MBA cohorts, exposure to global internships.” For students without corporate family connections or inherited social capital, she calls the degree “a democratising agent,” one that “legitimises your presence in elite professional circles and accelerates upward mobility in ways that raw skill alone often cannot.”