Pratham Mittal is the founder of Tetr College of Business, which teaches undergraduates by having them build real ventures as they move through seven countries, from India and Dubai to Ghana, the US and Argentina.

Its third cohort, reported in September 2026, numbers 300 students from around 60 countries, and the company says ventures started by its students have generated more than US$1 million in revenue and raised over US$500,000. The business, whose degrees are awarded in partnership with UBI Business School, raised around US$18 million in a Series A round co-led by Owl Ventures and Bertelsmann India Investments in November 2025, and earlier this year Mittal joined Shark Tank India as a guest judge.

Working between the UK and India, he tells Business Matters why students should not have to wait until after graduation to gain real experience.

What do you currently do at Tetr College of Business?

I am the founder of Tetr College of Business, a global business school where students learn business by building businesses. My role is to keep that idea at the centre of the curriculum and the opportunities we create.

Tetr was designed for the startup era. Rather than learning mainly through lectures and exams, students travel across seven markets and build real ventures. I am closely involved in shaping that model, aligning our team and opening doors that would not normally be available to students.

Our latest undergraduate cohort brings together 300 students from nearly 60 countries, including six from the UK. The British students arrive with experience of starting businesses, securing paying clients and raising money for good causes. Ben Hughes, for example, built a gardening business that generated around US$26,000 in nine months, while Khyan Kamalan secured the first client for his agency and helped raise more than £20,000 through Karai Welfare.

Ultimately, I want the college to be judged by outcomes. Our undergraduate programme has already led to the creation of several student-founded ventures. Together, these startups have generated more than US$1 million in revenue and raised over US$500,000 in funding from global VCs and founders. That matters because students are not simply discussing entrepreneurship. They are learning by building real businesses.

What was the inspiration behind your business?

My own experience as a student helped shape Tetr. At the University of Pennsylvania, I took a class with Adam Grant, the organisational psychologist and author, whose practical approach to teaching made a lasting impression on me. A project for the Philadelphia Inquirer led my co-founder and me to develop a tool that later became a business, showing me first-hand how much students can learn from solving a genuine commercial problem.

I learned entrepreneurship by solving a real problem for a real organisation. Tetr grew from the idea that this should be the organising principle of an entire business degree, designed for the startup era and judged by what students could actually build and achieve.

The inspiration behind Tetr also came from building companies and working with graduates. I kept seeing the same gap: intelligent people could perform well in classrooms, but many had little experience of building something, finding customers, selling it and changing direction when necessary.

That question is particularly relevant in the UK, where the graduate jobs debate often returns to the same catch-22: employers want experience, but students are frequently left to acquire it outside the degree they are paying for.

Who do you admire?

I admire Adam Grant because he changed my understanding of what good education can do. He taught differently inside a traditional institution and encouraged us to ask better questions, think independently and test our ideas in the real world.

More broadly, I admire people who are prepared to question inherited assumptions and then do the difficult work of proving that a different approach can succeed.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

I would have trusted my own judgement sooner. Advice can be valuable, but it is always shaped by the circumstances in which someone else learned their lessons. What worked for them may not fit the problem you are trying to solve.

I now listen carefully, but filter advice through first principles and real-world evidence. When we started Tetr, people said the model was too complicated, that students and parents would not trust it and that operating across countries would create too much difficulty. If I had accepted those judgements at face value, the college would not exist.

Students in our latest cohort have chosen Tetr despite holding offers from established UK universities including UCL, King’s College London, LSE, Warwick and Edinburgh, which suggests there is an appetite for a different model.

The better response was to test the model carefully, listen to students and parents, and improve it through evidence. I would simply have learned sooner to distinguish constructive challenges from advice rooted in outdated assumptions.

What defines your way of doing business?

Staying close to reality defines my way of doing business. Founders can become too attached to how they think a business ought to work. Customers, employees and results tell you how it is actually working, so you have to listen and be willing to iterate.

Execution matters just as much. Building across different countries, systems and timelines can create big problems, including student visa delays close to travel deadlines. I have developed a degree of relentlessness, which means staying with the problem until you find a way through it.

I also believe in alignment. With around 90 people working across countries and campuses, everyone needs to understand what we are building and move in the same direction.

Finally, results should speak louder than claims. Students and parents place their trust in us, so we have to judge ourselves by what students do, build and learn. Our British intake includes young people who had already found customers and generated income before starting university, and the test for us is whether the degree helps them build on that ability.

Recognition such as our Gold award for Innovation in Business Education at the QS Reimagine Education Awards is valuable, but the strongest validation is still the progress of our students.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Start with a real problem and stay close to the people experiencing it. Speak to customers early, test your assumptions and decide what evidence would make you change course. Founders often get into trouble because they treat their original idea as something to defend rather than a hypothesis to improve.

For someone starting university or a career in the UK, I would also say that experience should not be treated as something that happens after the academic work is finished. Look for opportunities to take responsibility for real outcomes, whether through a business, a paid job, a placement or a project with an outside organisation. Academic depth matters, but it becomes more valuable when you have tested what you know against the real world.

Listen to advice, but do not follow it blindly. Understand the assumptions behind it and decide whether they fit your circumstances. Some people will identify a genuine risk. Others are simply describing the limits of the existing model. You need the judgement to tell the difference.

Be practical about funding. I initially financed Tetr using capital from businesses I had built previously, allowing us to test the model before raising institutional investment to scale. The right approach depends on what the business actually requires.

Build a team that understands the destination and focus on execution. When a goal matters, do not treat an initial refusal as the final answer. Work out what would need to change and keep making the case.

Finally, find ways to keep some distance from work. Swimming and time with people close to me help me step back and think more clearly.

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