Ekta Agrawal’s Rs 40 Lakh INSEAD Loan and the Bet Behind It

Ekta Agrawal was 20 when she signed a Rs 40 lakh loan (roughly $47,600) to study at INSEAD, and she says she has no regrets. Her Instagram video this week laid out the return: friends in 33 countries, an alumni network of more than 20,000 people working in top companies, and experiences at 22 that most people don’t reach at 40. Tens of thousands of views followed, with commenters splitting between those who agreed and one who cut straight to the point: “How much do you earn now?”

That salary question will have a clean answer once she posts it. The harder prior question, about who can arrange the Rs 40 lakh in the first place, is the one her comments mostly skip.

What Rs 40 Lakh Covers at INSEAD

Agrawal’s age makes INSEAD’s Master in Management (MIM, a 14-to-16-month post-graduate program for recent graduates with little or no work experience) the most likely fit. The school’s MBA enrolls candidates averaging 29 years old with roughly 5.5 years of professional experience. The MIM’s average student age is 23. For someone who borrowed at 20 and is 22 today, the younger program is the one that fits the timeline.

Tuition for the MIM’s Class of 2028 comes to €57,870, all taxes included, as detailed in the school’s published MIM financing guidance. Living expenses add roughly €22,000 for the program’s duration, per the school’s own estimates. At approximately Rs 90 per euro, tuition runs about Rs 52 lakh, and the total estimated cost lands near Rs 72 lakh.

A Rs 40 lakh loan covers approximately 55% of that combined total. The rest comes from scholarships, savings, family funds, or some combination. The school’s data shows around 39-40% of MIM students receive a merit-based award averaging approximately €13,600, or roughly Rs 12 lakh. A student who combined a mid-range scholarship with a Rs 40 lakh loan and Rs 8-10 lakh in savings would arrive close to the full cost of the program.

The video frames the loan as the singular funding mechanism. The complete picture, as the school’s financial aid guidance describes it, is a blended arrangement.

• €57,870: INSEAD MIM tuition for the Class of 2028
• ~Rs 72 lakh: estimated total cost (tuition plus living expenses at Rs 90 per euro)
• 39-40% of MIM students receive merit scholarships; average award approximately €13,600

The EMI Equation Nobody Posted

State Bank of India (SBI) charges 10.15-11.75% per annum on overseas education loans, according to India’s 2025 study abroad loan rate comparisons. Private lenders go higher: HDFC Credila at 12.80% fixed, most private banks and NBFCs (non-banking financial companies) in the 10-13% range. Those rates apply after a borrower clears what the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) requires before any bank will extend the money.

For loans above Rs 7.5 lakh (which covers essentially all overseas study borrowing at this scale), RBI guidelines require tangible collateral: property, a fixed deposit, or a life insurance policy. Parents or guardians are mandatory co-borrowers. A 15% margin requirement applies to overseas study loans, meaning the borrower must produce Rs 6 lakh independently before the bank commits the remainder.

At SBI’s base overseas rate of 10.15%, a Rs 40 lakh principal over a 15-year repayment tenure produces a monthly EMI of roughly Rs 43,300, calculated using a standard amortization formula. During the moratorium, which under RBI guidelines covers the course duration plus six to twelve months, interest compounds on the unpaid balance. Over a 20-month moratorium on a 14-month program plus a six-month grace period, approximately Rs 6.8 lakh accrues before the first EMI is due.

The comment she hasn’t answered is the one that makes the math close: her current salary.

Network as Return on Investment

The Numbers in Context

The video puts the alumni figure at “over 20,000 people working in top companies across the world.” The school’s official alumni community numbers more than 70,000 graduates across 180 countries with 170 nationalities. The 20,000 she references is most likely the active, searchable subset accessible through the school’s digital portal and LinkedIn connections, alongside the formal alumni chapter system, which operates across 49 associations in 52 countries.

The gap in those figures matters less than the critics assume. The combined MBA classes of roughly 1,000 students per year draw 73 nationalities. Smaller program cohorts of about 161 students from 35 nationalities run at a comparable ratio. At those proportions, a classmate in a different country can typically be reached directly, without a cold introduction. The school also maintains active alumni associations in Indian cities including Mumbai and Delhi, which means the network doesn’t require relocating abroad to access.

What Placement Data Shows

MBA graduates from the school average a starting salary of €108,500, with a median sign-on bonus of €27,600, per class statistics compiled by ClearAdmit’s INSEAD program profile from the school’s own placement figures. MIM starting salaries sit lower and vary considerably by geography and sector. The school’s hiring relationships with consulting and financial-sector firms, which absorb the majority of graduates across both programs, span degrees.

The 2023 MIM cohort counted 161 participants from 35 nationalities. At a class that size, most graduates know most of the others personally, which gives the network a warmth at smaller scale that larger programs trade for sheer volume. How much that warmth translates into career momentum depends heavily on what each graduate brings to those conversations before the program begins.

Where the network argument gets harder to test: it compounds most reliably for students who arrived with professional communication fluency, some existing industry context, and the social confidence to initiate contact with senior strangers. The alumni infrastructure exists. Making it work depends on starting conditions the infrastructure itself doesn’t supply.

India’s Study Abroad Market Is Cooling

Between April and August 2025, Indian families spent $1 billion on overseas education under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS, the RBI framework allowing individuals to remit up to $250,000 abroad per year). That’s a 22% drop from the same period in 2024 and the lowest April-August outflow since 2017, based on data from The PIE News citing Reserve Bank of India remittance statistics. India’s Ministry of External Affairs had counted approximately 1.3 million Indian students pursuing overseas studies; that population fell by roughly 15% through 2024 as visa access to traditional destinations contracted. A Redseer Strategy Consultants and Wise report also found that Indian families lost an estimated Rs 1,700 crore to exchange-rate markups and banking fees on overseas education transfers in 2024, an additional cost that headline loan figures don’t capture.

The compression is destination-specific:

• Canada rejected close to 80% of Indian study permit applications in 2025
• US student arrivals from India fell by more than 45% year over year
• The UK tightened eligibility for its post-study Graduate Route visa
• Australia maintained strict caps on international student enrolment

The program’s campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore sit outside that rejection pattern. France and Germany have absorbed some of the Indian student redirect as the four traditional English-speaking destinations tighten. The program’s two-campus structure, which has students rotate between Europe and Asia, positions it as an option that sidesteps the North American and Australian visa uncertainty weighing on the broader market.

How Access Works Before ROI Does

The Conditions That Precede the Application

The salary-versus-EMI debate is real. The prior contest is over who qualifies for the loan at all.

Securing a large overseas education loan in India requires satisfying several conditions simultaneously:

• A co-applicant, typically a parent, with declared steady income
• Tangible collateral: property, a fixed deposit, or an insurance instrument
• Rs 6 lakh arranged independently as the mandated 15% margin on a loan of this size
• Minimum 60% marks in the qualifying examination, required by most lenders
• Confirmed admission to a recognized foreign institution

The MIM program adds its own admissions filters: a competitive undergraduate transcript, a GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) or GRE (Graduate Record Examination) score, and a formal application process that most candidates outside large metropolitan centers don’t have structured coaching access to.

Who Gets Through

India’s education loan market disbursed approximately Rs 17,600 crore across domestic and overseas borrowers in 2022-23, per banking sector data on India’s education loan rates. Those approvals concentrate toward borrowers who clear multiple prior eligibility tests at once: a family balance sheet that satisfies a collateral desk, a student profile that satisfies an overseas admissions committee, and a familiarity with elite international programs that correlates closely with urban, professional households.

The question of access isn’t only about the money. Knowing which institutions qualify as recognized for lender purposes, understanding that post-graduate programs of this kind exist for fresh undergraduates, and accessing test-prep and application coaching sophisticated enough to produce a competitive score all align with precisely the household profiles that can also meet the collateral requirement.

Agrawal is transparent about the loan and clear that she believes it paid off in ways that extend beyond the financial. What the video can’t change is the structure that precedes the bank’s approval stamp. The alumni network she describes is real. For the student watching from a tier-3 city, the question of whether to borrow starts from a considerably different position.

The first EMI on a 14-month program falls due about 20 months after enrollment, per standard moratorium rules. Until she shares her salary, the financial half of her argument stays open on one side.