From Explaining News to Building a Business: Aswin Menon’s Journey with an Online MBA 

It’s past 11 pm in Alappuzha (Kerala), and the only light in the room is the blue glow of a laptop screen. Somewhere in the last six hours, a piece of news broke somewhere in the world, and by morning, 1.4 million people will expect Aswin Menon M (popularly known as Aswin Madappally) to have already made sense of it for them. Tonight, though, he isn’t scripting a video. He’s finishing a case study on portfolio risk, due before his 9 am class. This is not a metaphor for balance. This is Tuesday. 

Ask him how it all began, and he’ll take you back to a classroom in Alappuzha, Kerala. As a college student, Aswin discovered that he genuinely enjoyed presenting ideas and speaking in front of an audience. He found himself looking forward to those moments when he could explain something, engage with people, and hold their attention. “I genuinely enjoyed speaking in front of an audience,” he says. “Whether it was classroom presentations, seminars, or stage events, I always looked forward to opportunities where I could explain ideas and connect with people.” 

One day, somewhere in his third year of undergrad, the thought arrived uninvited: if I like presenting this much, why not just start a YouTube channel? No studio. No investors. No plan, really but just a phone he’d already owned for four years, and the stubborn belief that people would show up for someone who could make complicated things sound simple. 

Must read: Creator Economy: Building Trust, Not Just Followers 

A Channel Becomes a Company, Whether You Notice or Not 

The early videos covered whatever caught his curiosity like history, unsolved mysteries, true crime, science. Somewhere in the last two years, though, the channel narrowed and sharpened into something else entirely: current affairs, geopolitics, business, economics, financial markets, public policy. Under the name Aswin Madappally, it’s now one of Kerala’s most-watched Malayalam platforms for exactly that kind of coverage. The news nobody has time to decode themselves. 

What snuck up on him wasn’t the subscriber count. It was the paperwork. Somewhere between the research, the brand negotiations, the GST filings, and the 2 am edits, Aswin realized he’d stopped being a guy with a camera and started being the CEO of something he hadn’t formally named. 

In many ways, I wasn’t just creating content anymore. I was building and managing a growing digital media business. 

— Aswin Menon M 

That’s the sentence that sent him looking for an MBA. Not a certificate to frame. A way to stop running the business on instinct alone. 

The Trust Test 

Aswin doesn’t take people’s word for things. It’s practically a professional reflex. Before he puts his name next to a financial brand, he checks whether it’s actually regulated by the RBI, SEBI, or IRDAI. So when he went looking for an MBA, he ran his university through the same interrogation he’d run a sponsor through: Is this UGC-recognised? Is the accreditation real? Is the faculty actually qualified, or just photographed well? 

Manipal University Jaipur, offered through Online Manipal, was the one that survived the audit. It had a NAAC A+ accredited, a curriculum built with working professionals in mind, live sessions that didn’t collapse into passive video-watching the moment the camera turned on. 

I wasn’t simply looking for flexibility. I was looking for credibility. 

— Aswin Menon M 

Two Hours, Every Day, No Exceptions 

There’s no such thing as a quiet week when your job is explaining the news. So Aswin didn’t wait for one. He carved out roughly two hours a day for his MBA and defended that time the way he’d defend a filming deadline. During exams, he’d pre-record a stockpile of videos, so his audience never felt the gap and spend the freed-up hours revising. When breaking news collided with a live lecture, which it often did, the recorded version waited for him, sometimes until midnight, sometimes until a layover between shoots. 

Two subjects stuck with him more than the rest. Security Analysis and Portfolio Management gave him a sharper lens for the markets he was already covering on camera. He could now explain risk instead of just reporting it. Strategic Management and Business Policy did something quieter but bigger: it moved him from thinking in videos to thinking in years. 

I never treated my MBA and my career as two separate journeys. Every lecture helped me make better decisions in my business, and every real-world experience helped me understand my MBA better. 

— Aswin Menon M 

Walking Into a Negotiation With a Different Playbook 

The clearest proof the degree worked isn’t on a transcript. It’s in a boardroom. Aswin has since negotiated collaborations with Policybazaar, Zerodha, Motilal Oswal, HDFC Life, TATA AIA, Bajaj Allianz, Niva Bupa, and Outskill, among others. He says the conversations themselves have changed shape. Where he once accepted a brand’s reasoning because it sounded confident, he now recognises the strategy underneath it. 

“Today, I approach those conversations with a much stronger understanding of pricing strategies, value creation, business economics, negotiation techniques, and long-term partnerships,” he says. GST, taxation, and payment structuring were once complicated tasks that took up much of his time. With a better understanding of these areas, he was able to handle them with greater confidence, making them a routine part of managing his business. 

Also read: Important Concepts to Learn During an MBA in Finance 

The Day It Stopped Being Abstract 

For two years, the MBA lived mostly on a screen with a login, a recorded lecture, a submission deadline etc. Then came the convocation at Manipal University Jaipur, and Kerala’s most-watched explainer of other people’s news found himself, for once, at a loss trying to describe his own. 

He walked a campus he’d never physically studied on. He met classmates face-to-face after two years of knowing them only as names in a chat window. He found his own photograph buried inside a wall-sized collage of graduating faces. A valid proof, in the most unglamorous way possible, that the thing had actually happened. 

Then came the oath, the stage, hundreds of graduates in a single breath, and a degree in hand that had taken shape somewhere between midnight edits and 6 am flights. 

The convocation wasn’t the end  my MBA journey — it was the moment I truly felt part of the Manipal University Jaipur family. 

— Aswin Menon M 

What He’s Building Now 

Ask Aswin where this goes next, and the videos barely come up. He now has a bigger vision for the future. He wants to build one of India’s most trusted knowledge-driven media companies, growing beyond a YouTube channel into a full-fledged business. He also hopes to consult with financial institutions and brands, helping them communicate complex ideas in a simple and accessible way. Financial literacy, in particular, keeps coming up: teaching people to read markets and money the way he once taught himself, minus the four years it took him to figure it out alone. 

To anyone assuming they don’t have time for a degree on top of a career, his answer isn’t motivational-poster material. It’s closer to a warning. 

Don’t wait until life becomes less busy because that day rarely comes. We often think we need free time before we can start learning, but in reality, we make time for the things we truly value. 

— Aswin Menon M 

Somewhere tonight, a piece of news is breaking that Aswin hasn’t heard yet. By morning, he’ll have researched it, scripted it, filmed it, and explained it to over a million people. The same instinct that started with a fifteen-second thrill before a college presentation, now running on an MBA’s worth of structure underneath it. 

Inspired by Aswin’s journey? Explore the Online MBA in Finance from Manipal University Jaipur, offered through Online Manipal, and see how flexible, credible online learning can fit around even the most unpredictable career.