Stoa – India’s first professional charter for business roles – Times of India

Degrees and colleges are signals. They tell you something about the competency of a person. No wonder there is a craze and clamour for people to get into top-tier colleges – it sends a strong signal and secures their future to some extent.

The MBA isn’t immune to this. But the statistics paint a different picture. According to a study, only about 50% of MBA holders are employable. This means there are many people spending lakhs of money and getting very little in return. Moreover, the traditional MBA is rigid. You need to quit your job, take a loan and study frameworks that may not be entirely relevant to the modern world.

The final piece is measuring competency, which is very hard to measure for business roles. Most organizations still have a trial and error method, which isn’t ideal. And one wrong hire can set a business back by years.

Stoa aims to plug this gaping hole into the business education ecosystem.

The Stoa Charter is the first-of-its-kind aimed at business education. It can be pursued alongside your work and costs a fraction of a traditional MBA (₹ 2.5 lakhs + GST).

To date, the average salary for people who have completed the Stoa Program is 15 lakhs and the average hike in remuneration is 72%.

According to Aditya Kulkarni, Co-founder and CEO of Stoa, “many people want business education, but not necessarily an MBA”

But, what exactly is the Stoa Charter?

Building on the success of its online StoaMBA program, which has 600+ alumni, the Stoa Charter is a CFA-like model applied to business education. Candidates inside the Stoa program can now prove their competence and earn their Stoa Level 1 / Level 2 to earn the Charter.

L1 trains people on ‘professional hygiene’ (commercial awareness, writing skills, communication, and analytical thinking) and business fundamentals. To receive the L1 Charter, candidates will solve & present the case for a given business problem in front of a jury to show their problem-solving skills and thought processes.

L2 is for learning domain-specific skills and clearing this is based on how you solve business problems in a particular domain. This allows people who don’t have experience in a specific field to gain knowledge and expertise to switch to that field.

“The Stoa Charter vouches for a person’s competence after we have trained them and are convinced about their abilities” Aditya goes on to elaborate.

The Charter will help professionals get all the benefits of an MBA without quitting their jobs or being burdened by exorbitant fees.

Signing up for Stoa will give you access to 50+ learning sprints across multiple domains (Marketing, Product, Finance, Leadership, Strategy & Operations, and General Management skills). Each learning sprint is one week long with a mix of self-paced learning over weekdays and group-based learning over weekends. Candidates can choose the domains they want to specialise in and select sprints accordingly.

Each level certifies a certain competency and capability to bring value to a business. These are awarded to individuals who complete the sprints and clear the test for the respective level. One passes each level by solving case studies that mimic the challenges businesses face today and pitching solutions to a panel of judges who test for subject-specific skills, way of thinking, and communication abilities.

An interesting aspect of the Stoa program is the mentoring and coaching, which are largely absent in mainstream education. Certified professional coaches help you gain clarity on your strengths and allow you to make better decisions. Interview coaching and resume preparation workshops will help you beat the queue and stand out in your quest to get the job you want. As you clear different levels, you get access to exclusive workshops, meetups, and a network of alumni who are also at the same level.

Stoa is backed by the founders of Zerodha, CRED, Udemy, Redbus, and Myntra. The faculty comprises people who work in fast-growing business environments and have their fingers on the pulse of the ever-changing business landscape.

In short, the Stoa Program helps you become a well-rounded, competent professional. Instead of a certificate, you’ll be equipped with the skills companies are looking for and have a thriving community to fall back on.

It’s a worthy competitor to the traditional MBA, which is time and cash-consuming.