Masters Union School of Business

Check the age gate first

MU Ventures is open to builders under 25 and says so plainly. If you are over that, nothing on the Masters' Union site is a route in for your startup — the rest of its startup activity is for enrolled students or school pupils, and its executive programmes are fee-paying courses.

Pick the right fund

• Dropout Fund — the only one taking applications. For school, undergraduate or postgraduate dropouts. It carries the twelve-month build year, the Founder Credits, the campus workspace and the academic safety net.
• Founders' Fund — consumer brands and deep-tech. Marked launching soon.
• Creator Fund — content-led businesses. MU Ventures says it prefers a large following or mostly organic traffic. Also marked launching soon.

There is one application form for all three, so if you fit the second or third, applying now is how you get on the list.

How the application works

The form has four steps and it is not a five-minute job. Set aside time for two things in particular:

• A one-minute video introducing your co-founders and how you met. You upload it in step two. Record it before you start the form.
• A 300-word answer on what you would build in the next three to six months if MU Ventures funded you. The form asks for specifics: your plan, key milestones, and how you would measure success. Treat that instruction as the marking scheme.

You will also need a website link, a four-to-five line description of the company and a deck, uploaded as a PDF, image or slide file.

What they seem to look for

The three written questions tell you more about MU Ventures than any of its marketing copy does. They ask what is broken in the world that you are uniquely positioned to fix, what you would do with the money in the next few months, and a time you went against conventional wisdom and were right. That last one is not filler — the fund's whole pitch is backing people other investors call too early, and its live fund is for people who left a course to build. Answer it with a real decision you made and what it cost you.

Do not over-polish the traction story. MU Ventures says it invests when the idea is still on paper and the prototype is not built, so a thin product is not the problem it would be elsewhere. A vague plan is.

What to expect after you submit

There is no published deadline, so applications appear to be open on a rolling basis. On submission the form says instructions for round one are emailed to you, which means the form is a screen rather than the whole process. MU Ventures says most funding decisions happen in under ten days; it does not publish who decides or on what criteria.

One thing to know before you plan around it

MU Ventures is an investment arm, not a grant scheme. Its pages describe cheques and an investment vehicle, but they never state what it takes in return. If the terms matter to your plans, ask before you go far — the MU Ventures inbox is the address to use.

Masters' Union is a private business school in Gurugram, Haryana, whose Our Story timeline begins in 2020. It teaches undergraduate, postgraduate and executive programmes, and it also runs its own early-stage investment arm, MU Ventures, which is the part of it that an outside founder can approach.

MU Ventures backs founders under 25 at what it calls the "-1 stage" — "paper-napkin stage", before day zero. Its own words are that it invests "when the idea is still on paper, your prototype isn't built, or your first customers are just a dream". It is sector-agnostic, and it says it is open to all builders under 25. That is the age gate, and it is the main thing to check before you spend time on an application.

How the funds work

MU Ventures describes three funds. The Dropout Fund is marked live. It is for school, undergraduate and postgraduate dropouts who want to build instead of following the script, and it comes with a twelve-month build year inside the Masters' Union ecosystem, up to 100 Founder Credits that convert into what MU Ventures calls Conviction Capital, and an academic safety net if the startup does not continue. The Founders' Fund and the Creator Fund are both marked "launching soon" and are not taking applications on their own yet. The Founders' Fund is aimed at consumer brands and deep-tech; the Creator Fund is for content-led businesses on YouTube, Instagram and similar platforms, where MU Ventures says it prefers a large following or mostly organic traffic.

Beyond the cheque, MU Ventures lists six things it gives its founders: monthly one-to-one mentorship sessions, a workspace on the Masters' Union campus, tech tools and credits to design and ship an MVP, introductions across the Masters' Union network of founders, CXOs and potential customers, PR and branding support including video assets, and help preparing for the next round. Its technology partner list — the credits and infrastructure its portfolio builds on — names Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Notion, Figma, HubSpot, Slack, GitHub, Stripe, Vercel, MongoDB and OpenAI.

MU Ventures says most of its funding decisions happen in under ten days. It does not publish a selection panel, scoring criteria or a decision timeline beyond that.

Who can apply

This is the part worth reading twice, because Masters' Union runs two very different kinds of startup activity and only one of them is open to you.

MU Ventures is open to outside founders. You do not need to be a Masters' Union student, and the pitch is explicitly for people with nothing built yet — "idea-only OK" is on the page. The gate is age: under 25. The Dropout Fund adds a second gate, that you have left school, an undergraduate course or a postgraduate course.

Everything the school lists under Innovation and Student Entrepreneurship is for its own enrolled students. The CEO Challenge, the Dropshipping Challenge, the Venture Initiation Programme and the Masters' Union Investment Fund are all described in terms of Masters' Union students, and the Investment Fund is run by students. The Founder Fellowship pays a monthly stipend for up to a year, but only to selected students who choose to build a venture instead of taking a campus placement. None of these has a public application route, and none of them is a way in for a founder who is not enrolled. The High School Startup League is for teenagers still at school. The school's other founder-facing offerings — the executive PGP in Entrepreneurship and Business Acceleration, for example — are fee-paying courses you join as a student, not programmes you apply to as a startup.

How to apply

There is one form, at the MU Ventures application page, and it covers all of MU Ventures. It runs in four steps. First your own details: name, date of birth, age, email, LinkedIn, phone, location, school and undergraduate institute. Second, your co-founders, with a one-minute video introducing them and the story of how you met. Third, three written questions — what is broken in the world that you are uniquely positioned to fix, what you would build over the next three to six months if MU Ventures funded you, in 300 words, and a time you went against conventional wisdom and turned out to be right. Fourth, your company details, website, a four-to-five line description and a deck upload.

There is no published deadline or intake window. When you submit, the form says instructions for round one are emailed to you, so expect at least one further stage. Questions go to the MU Ventures inbox.

Who runs it

Masters' Union was founded by Pratham Mittal, who is also General Partner at MU Ventures. Saksham Kotiya is Managing Partner at MU Ventures and Associate Director for Entrepreneurship at the school. Manoj Kohli, former CEO and MD of Bharti Airtel, chairs Masters' Union and sits on the MU Ventures advisory council alongside Shishir Maheshwari of EverSource Capital, Swapna Gupta, formerly of Avaana Capital, and Arjun Vaidya of V3 Ventures. Swati Ganeti and Nikhil Mittal are Managing Directors of the school, and Pankaj Bansal and Vivek Gambhir sit on its board.

MU Ventures names four companies in its portfolio: Cryptique, a growth platform for DeFi and crypto; Sanyark Space, which builds multi-mission satellites; Lexi's Sandwiches; and Blue Brew, a denim label. Separately, the school points to student ventures that have appeared on Shark Tank India, among them Bullspree, HiveSchool, MemoTag and Nexera Health — those are student companies, not MU Ventures investments.

Locations

The school's registered address is at DLF Cyber Park, Udyog Vihar Phase III, Sector 20, Gurgaon. MU Ventures gives a separate office address at CDS Corporate Tower, Udyog Vihar Phase 3, Sector 20, Gurugram. The co-working space offered to funded founders is on the Masters' Union campus. The school's site also carries a careers page and an events listing, though the events listing did not return anything when we checked it.

What the school says about itself

Masters' Union lists its accreditations and memberships as EFMD Global and a BGA institutional membership, plus an NSDC training-partner affiliation. It claims no incubation recognition — no technology business incubator status, no Atal Incubation Centre, no DPIIT or MeitY or BIRAC scheme — and none is claimed here. Its awards page lists a first place for enabling startup culture from the EducationWorld Grand Jury Awards and a gold award from ETEducation in 2025 for an institution-led startup ecosystem.