Mohit Chandel
Duke University, Fuqua School of Business
“Curious globetrotter, tech enthusiast, and storyteller passionate about connecting diverse experiences to drive innovation.”
Hometown: Mumbai, India
Fun Fact About Yourself: I travelled to 20 countries before I was 20 years old.
Undergraduate School and Major: Physics and Manufacturing Engineering (double major), BITS Pilani
Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Product Manager, Media.net (ad tech giant in India)
The MBA program is renowned for its “Team Fuqua” culture, which is predicated on six paired principles: Authentic Engagement, Supportive Ambition, Collective Diversity, Impactful Stewardship, Loyal Community, and Uncompromising Integrity. Which of these resonates most with you – and what does that principle demand of you as a Fuqua MBA? The most important aspect of Team Fuqua for me is the loyal community. I have always surrounded myself with dependable and kind people. My undergraduate university, BITS, also had a culture of dependability and community support. As an international student, attending Fuqua meant I had to leave behind everyone I knew and move to a country where I knew nobody.
I always wanted to go to a school with a small class size (300-400 students) that was community-focused. In that regard, Fuqua really stood out to me. Everyone I reached out to—from second-years to alumni and the admissions office—was extremely helpful. When I say helpful, I don’t just mean that they answered my queries, which almost any business school community would do. They really raised the bar when it came to helping applicants. They helped me proofread my essays, highlighted questions I hadn’t even thought to ask but were important for making a decision about business school, and helped me answer those questions. They connected me with alumni who had similar career trajectories as me prior to the MBA and who had gone on to do things similar to my short and long-term goals. All this, and so much more that I can’t include in this short paragraph, sold me on the idea that Team Fuqua is a real sentiment and something I could rely on as I made the move to a new country.
As a Fuqua MBA, the principle of Loyal Community demands that I actively engage in supporting my peers and fostering a collaborative environment. It requires me to prioritize inclusivity, empathy, and integrity in all interactions. I must commit to long-term engagement with the Fuqua network, contributing positively to its growth and supporting fellow members throughout our journey and beyond graduation. This principle guides me to uphold values of respect, responsibility, and supportive ambition within our community.
Aside from your classmates and school culture, what was the key part of Duke Fuqua’s MBA curriculum programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? One key part of Fuqua’s MBA curriculum that stands out to me is the open-ended nature of the curriculum and how closely Fuqua works with the rest of the school. Unlike other universities, where the business school campus is far away from the main campus and it is very impractical for students to take courses in other schools – Fuqua is near the center of Duke’s campus. During my time here, I intend to complete two concentrations—Decision Sciences and Strategy while also taking AI courses at Pratt (Duke’s engineering school) and policy courses at Sanford (Duke’s public policy school).
This is only possible because the curriculum allows us to choose our own classes after the first full term, and the schools are on the same campus, making it practical for me to attend a variety of classes.
What has been your first impression of the Fuqua MBA students and alumni you’ve met so far. Tell us your best Fuqua story so far. Everyone I reached out to—from second-years to alumni and the admissions office—was extremely helpful. When I say helpful, I don’t just mean that they answered my queries, which almost any business school community would do. They really raised the bar when it came to helping applicants. They helped me proofread my essays, highlighted questions I hadn’t even thought to ask but were important for making a decision about business school, and helped me answer those questions. They connected me with alumni who had similar career trajectories as me prior to the MBA and who had gone on to do things similar to my short and long-term goals. All this, and so much more that I can’t include in this short paragraph, sold me on the idea that Team Fuqua is a real sentiment and something I could rely on as I made the move to a new country.
Before I left for the U.S., a bunch of Fuqua alums—right from the early 2000s to 2023 graduates—hosted me and my partner for dinner. During the dinner, everyone was so generous with their time and their advice and showed genuine enthusiasm for my MBA journey. They also gave excellent advice to my partner about how we can navigate the challenge of being apart for some time as one of us went through major life changes. At the end of the dinner, they insisted on giving us a ride home and offered advice to my partner (who will apply to Duke next year) regarding her application.
What course, club or activity excites you the most at Duke Fuqua? At Media.net, I saw first-hand the value of having diverse voices in the product team juxtaposed with the difficulty that non-STEM applicants face during hiring. Through one-on-one coaching, I helped more than ten diverse candidates get hired in my product team. Through the Duke MBA Tech Club, I will help classmates with non-traditional backgrounds break into product management by identifying existing skills that are valuable and crafting compelling narratives based on their lived experiences.
I will bolster this by starting a podcast that focuses on the power of storytelling in building new products. During COVID, I started Ongoing Conversations, a dialogue on how technology improves our daily lives. With this podcast, I will collaborate with fellow product managers in my class to highlight their journey in tech, sharing exciting problems they worked on and their challenges. Together, we’ll showcase how visionary product managers utilize people’s stories of aspirations and challenges to craft innovative products.
I am also keen to bring my experience with storytelling and design to the Design & Innovation Club. While working at Mason (a SAAS startup), I worked extensively on using intuitive design to overcome resistance to technology among small and medium-sized businesses in India, culminating in winning the Shopify Award for best user experience. I hope to leverage this experience to create a design challenge that utilizes user personas to improve product design. I will also have focused brainstorming sessions where members dissect current business challenges faced by real-world B2C companies. Using storytelling, we’ll tap into the customer’s journey and prototype design-driven solutions, turning narratives into actionable blueprints. This approach will help us hone our design skills and instill a deep appreciation for the symbiotic relationship between storytelling and pragmatic business problem-solving.
Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Navigating the dynamics of corporate culture is not unlike growing up with temperamental parents — both demand an innate skill to gauge the atmosphere. In the bustling conference room of Media.net, the air was thick with skepticism as I pitched transitioning from a sales-driven model to a product-led approach for increasing revenue. I was tasked with revamping our product development processes. Bridging this chasm of doubt required empathy, vulnerability, and assembling a diverse team to confront our inherent weaknesses.
My first step was introducing a peer review system for new product requirements. Initially struggling to get adoption, I organized one-on-one discussions with all product managers and realized they were apprehensive of untested strategies. As someone who tended to favor processes that had worked for me in the past, I became the champion of the change I was proposing. Integrating the review process within my product portfolio, my development team demonstrated a 30% uptick in new feature utilization, convincing others to adopt the approach. Empathizing with those skeptical of change enabled me to implement the new process successfully.
As we were improving our operations, we needed to build trust in our ability to create exceptional products. My new monthly newsletter, aptly titled “What Went Wrong?”, highlighted our challenges and strategies to overcome them. Despite my manager’s reservations, this candid dialogue resonated with our stakeholders, solidifying their faith in our capabilities. Equipped with richer insights, the sales team could better manage client expectations, improving customer satisfaction. They could also help product managers prioritize features better. By embracing vulnerability, the product team built genuine trust, leading to stronger stakeholder collaboration.
However, an underlying challenge remained—the homogeneity of our product team. A staggering 90% of us had STEM backgrounds—strong in technical problem-solving but lacking in intuitive decision-making. This resulted in us being a second-mover in many product categories as we over-indexed on market data. Recognizing the barriers that deterred non-STEM aspirants from product roles pushed me to get involved in recruitment. I published a series of blog posts titled “How-To-Tech,” detailing technical interview questions for non-traditional candidates. Through pre-interview calls, I helped applicants get comfortable with the Media.net process. Slowly, we diversified our team, bringing individuals from eclectic backgrounds on board. Their fresh perspectives have become the cornerstone of several groundbreaking product features.
All my work was put to the test when we were shortlisted as ad-tech partners for Yahoo. Our new product development process was instrumental in securing this collaboration—which can deliver tenfold projected revenue growth for the company.
Looking ahead two years, what would make your MBA experience successful? I would consider my MBA experience successful if I connect with people who have had very different lived experiences from mine. One example is my classmate who served in the U.S. military and was deployed all over the world. I love talking to her about what her life was like before business school, and I feel like I have so much to learn from her. I have another classmate who worked in venture capital prior to the MBA, and his way of evaluating companies is so interesting.
During my first week in Durham, the South American cohort took me out to party with them. They shared stories, asked about my life and were generally very open. The love and warmth I have received from them have been amazing. I want to continue working in tech as a product manager post-MBA, but I hope I can bring an enlightened perspective to my job from all the shared experiences I am having with my classmates.
What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Duke Fuqua’s MBA program? It might be cliché, but just be yourself. Try to let as much of your personality come through in the “25 Things About You” essay as possible. Sometimes, with a lot of external input, people can lean towards writing very measured responses to essay prompts, but I feel Duke is one of the schools where bringing your personality to the application process really pays off. All the essays that my classmates have shown me are extremely unique and represent them well.
