Aishwarya Kansakar: Like Ink in Water

Melbourne is an international city. One of the greatest joys of studying at the Melbourne Business School(MBS) are the opportunities it opens to you –both here, and around the globe – and the people you’ll meet, students and teachers who have come from all over the world to make Melbourne a hub for international talent. Aishwarya Kansakar is one such student.

At 20 years old, Aishwarya Kansakar launched her first startup (which today employs 85 people). It came in the wake of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. At the time of the quake, Aishwarya was studying in Japan. Upon hearing of the disaster in her home country, she and her friends launched a fundraising initiative, collecting approximately 5 million Japanese Yen (over $60,000 AUD) that they donated to the Red Cross and some United Nations subsidiaries. However, they realised they were unable to track where the funds they had donated had been used, which in turn inspired them to launch a new initiative, something sustainable, that they could effectively monitor.

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Aishwarya and fellow students

Now in the final semester of her Master of Management, Aishwarya has become firmly embedded in the MBS community. She’s won the Deputy Dean’s award, and recently placed second in the world for the PwC Innovation Challenge. It’s all part of Aishwarya’s fast-paced lifestyle that came with her move to Melbourne, an interesting take from someone who’s lived in Tokyo.

“Here, it’s fast. I think in terms of the ethnographic dynamic, the city is slower, but life at Melbourne Business School is faster. There’s so much to get involved with. I’ve always tried to expose myself to lots of multidisciplinary challenges.

Aishwarya was awarded the Global Graduate Merit Scholarship to help complete her studies at MBS. If you’re a scholarship recipient and yet to accept your offer, get started here.

Aishwarya Kansakar

I’ve done competitions since day one, and I actually had an interview with the Translating Research at Melbourne (TRAM) program on my first day, and then my second day in I started working with them.”

Now, after graduating, Aishwarya plans to stay in Melbourne, making the most of the foundation she has set and the connections she’s made since being here.

She’s part of a growing global community that call Melbourne home, and make it an enriching place to live, work, and study. It’s become a hub for people like Aishwarya, who consider themselves cosmopolitans and imagine an international future.

“Coming to Melbourne is a new cultural experience in itself. I’m lucky in that my background lets me settle anywhere. My schooling was in India and Nepal, which is another part of the mix, and I speak several languages,” she says. “Coming to Melbourne, I realised that in a city like this, I kind of dissolve into it, like ink in water. It sounds vague, but I don’t see these boundaries anymore. I’m very mobile in terms of my future.”

Melbourne Business School holds information sessions within Australia and internationally throughout the year. If you're interested to know more about MBS programs, click here to see when we will be in a city near you.