Why I Chose to Pursue a GMBA After 3 Years of Work Experience and Leaving a Well-Settled Life
On my second day in Singapore, I rented a bicycle and cycled across the city.
I landed a day earlier, my first time in the country, and a sensible person would have spent the weekend unpacking. But I have never been good at sitting still. So, I picked up a cycle and rode past shophouses, Marina Bay Sands, Gardens by the Bay, along the water, through green corridors somebody clearly designed with real care. Somewhere in the middle of that ride, it hit me: a few months earlier I had been at a desk in India building go-to-market strategies for MedTech clients. Now I am here, starting over on purpose.
That ride was the first proof that I had done it.
I spent 2.3 years at ZS as a Decision Analytics Associate. My work sat in go-to-market strategy for MedTech clients, and I ran pricing research projects. It was a strong start. I learned how to break a vague business question into something measurable, how to defend a number in front of people who know far more than I do, and how to build a story a client will act on.
What I slowly realised was where my curiosity actually lived. I was drawn to B2C products, the ones people hold, use, complain about and love. I wanted to see the customer experience at the other end of my work. In consulting, you hand over a strategy and the story moves on without you. Sometimes it gets implemented, sometimes not, and even when it does, the impact usually lands in someone else’s inbox. I wanted to stay in the room after the recommendation was made.
So I tried to move. I applied for Product Manager roles, carrying a six-month product management internship I had done right after my engineering degree. It was real work, but on paper it was six months, and six months does not count when you are up against people who have spent years in the role. I got the same polite answer enough times to understand the message: I did not need more enthusiasm; I needed a different runway.
That is how the MBA stopped being an idea and became a decision. I joined SP Jain School of Global Management, took Marketing as my specialisation, and kept an eye on supply chain, because I have always been curious about how a product reaches the person who buys it.
Term 1 was in Singapore, and the city taught me as much as any classroom. It is a small place with almost no natural advantages, and it has become one of the strongest economies in the world. The more I looked, the more it came down to two things: trusting your people and getting the policies right. That combination can pull a country out from under water, and it scales down to teams and companies.
The global learning experience took us everywhere. We went from Universal Studios to the Singapore Zoo, both masterclasses in experience design if you look closely. We visited the maritime port and its headquarters, where you watch the world economy move past in steel boxes. We attended sessions at Grant Thornton, Google and volunteered at LogiSym, which showed me how large operations actually run across very different segments and what the new technologies emerge in the world of supply chain.
Some lessons did not look like lessons. We were taken to learn golf, because a lot of networking happens on a golf course and nobody teaches you that in a lecture hall. We did dragon boat racing for team building, ten people, one boat, and the humbling discovery that ten strong rowers out of sync move slower than six in rhythm.
Not all of it happened on field trips. In class we built prototypes as teams, ran a nostalgia-driven branding individual research project, why people pay for the feeling of an older timer and put together presentation after presentation with cohort members from very different backgrounds. Different accents, one deck, one deadline.
I also joined PLACOM, the placements committee, and PRP, our Professional Readiness Program, two seats that put me close to the exact process I will be walking through myself.
Sport has always been my other classroom. At SP Jain Singapore campus, I have won Gold in Men’s Doubles in table tennis and Gold in football and for the past three years I have played badminton continuously, week after week which taught me the most underrated skill of all: showing up when nobody is watching.
Dragon boating felt familiar for exactly that reason. So did the first few weeks of an MBA. New team, unfamiliar rhythm, everybody capable, nobody in sync yet and then, slowly, you find the stroke.
Term 2 Dubai: The zeal has not changed in Term 2, but the geography has. Dubai does not stop innovating. I visited the Museum of the Future, and what stays with me is not the building but the ambition behind it: plans pitched sky-high, then made concrete enough to walk through. It is hard to beat a city that treats the future as a project plan.
Here I have joined the Global Learning Committee and the Industrial Project Committee, and I handle media for my cohort, the GMBA Feb’26 batch. Different roles, same instinct: get closer to how things get built.
Soon the real test arrives, the part where the reason for doing an MBA has to prove itself, when it comes to being selected for the role you want. My rough plan is 30% polishing the skills I brought with me, and 70% learning the ones I did not have. I am aiming for a role that sits at the intersection of sport and marketing.
I do not yet know what that job will be called. But I know what that ride felt like on day two in Singapore, and I would rather keep pedalling towards it than sit still.
About the author
Tanmay Khandelwal is a student in SP Jain School of Global Management’s Global MBA (GMBA) February 2026 cohort, specialising in Marketing. Before joining SP Jain, he worked as a Decision Analytics Associate at ZS, focusing on go-to-market strategy and pricing research for MedTech clients.
