Building my own company is fascinating

The thrill-seeking gene is embedded in Megha Jose’s DNA. She admits to being “a huge adventure junkie. I love anything adrenaline-pumping, be it skydiving or bungee-jumping. I try to find adventure in everything I do.”

Now the 27-year-old MBA student is embarking on her next white-knuckle ride: launching her company, Tender. Targeted at young professionals in India, it is an investment advisory firm that aims to make investing profitable, engaging – and fun.

Farewell, corporate world

Megha, who grew up in Tamil Nadu in southern India, already had a successful career before coming to LBS. In 2016, she was a Product Manager at Cisco, helping to build its private cloud. But after three-and-a-half years, boredom with the corporate world set in.

 

“I knew exactly what every day would hold,” the computer science graduate recalls. “I didn’t like the monotony. It got very comfortable and I wasn’t challenging myself. So I left to join my dad, who’d been managing his own stockbroking and wealth management firm for 30 years.”

Joining her father’s company was more of a culture shock than Megha imagined. It was a traditional, boutique-style firm, where everything was “very manual”, even the accounts were done in books. So she decided to shake things up.

“I told my dad I needed to form my own team, do things on my own,” she says. “He gave me the opportunity to do that. I started off with what I knew, the tech side, and revamped the digital architecture, making it more online. Then I started learning the core business – wealth management and broking.

She also wants to make the experience as social as possible, believing that when people know they’re in it together, they’ll behave more rationally, with a sense of calm and trust.

“You can play against your friend who you follow on the platform, so each time you win a challenge, you’ll go to the top of the leaderboard. At the end of the month, say the top five people on the leaderboard will get an incentive from the company. It’s about encouraging good investing behaviour, ensuring they keep coming back to the app and learning more.”

Podcasts and sport

Away from the project, Megha is on the committees of LBS’s Entrepreneurship Club and Football Club (she has played 5-a-side and 11-a-side for her district, and is an avid Chelsea fan). She unwinds by listening to podcasts (a history buff, her favourites are Conspiracy Theories and Dictators; others include Masters of Scale and How I Built This, with Guy Raz). She handles her animal welfare NGO remotely, for an hour or two each day; in two years it has built a presence in five cities in India. Her own dog, a golden retriever called Benji, is in India with her parents right now, but will be joining her in New York this fall, where she’s going for her exchange. After the MBA, she plans to set up a base in Mumbai, with her father on board as an investment advisor. She hopes to have the first Tender product out by October.

“Without LBS I wouldn’t be able to multitask so efficiently,” she concludes. “I’ve got used to this fast-paced life and it makes you much more productive. The school prepares you to tackle anything head-on. I used to think very differently and it’s really opened my mind. I’ve changed so much over the past year, it’s blown my mind.”