Long before Tarun Anand founded the Universal Business School (USB) in Karjat near Mumbai, he learnt an important lesson while working as the Managing Director of news provider Thomson Reuters’s South Asia bureau. Then based out of Hong Kong, Anand had to frequently interact with Mandarin-speaking Chinese government officials. “…I was dealing extensively with the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank. I learnt Mandarin, which endeared me to the Chinese government officials, as every meeting began in Mandarin. This was a game-changer and helped us win contracts,” Anand tells Outlook. The key takeaway for Anand during his 25-year-long stint with Thomson Reuters is that knowing multiple languages can give you a significant advantage. It’s a lesson he is now passing on to students of his B-school where learning at least one foreign language is mandatory.
Having just an MBA degree is no longer cool. As the world shrinks and businesses grow and expand to new regions and countries, business schools have...
