MBA or massive mistake? CA’s ₹25 lakh deficit echoes Nikhil Kamath’s brutal assessment

Is an MBA still worth ₹40 lakh and two years off your career? A blunt cost-benefit breakdown by Meenal Goel, a chartered accountant, is drawing fresh attention online, just as a viral comment by Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath stirs debate over the value of elite business degrees.

Goel’s post, which lays bare her personal ROI from an MBA pursued between 2019 and 2021, calculates the total cost at ₹39.5 lakh. That includes tuition, living expenses, miscellaneous academic costs, and the opportunity cost of forgoing a ₹8 lakh-per-year job for two years.

The returns? From a pre-MBA salary of ₹8 lakh in 2019, Goel doubled her pay post-graduation to ₹16 lakh, now earning ₹21 lakh in 2025. Over four years, she earned ₹74 lakh — ₹14 lakh more than what she would have made without the MBA, assuming a steady 12 percent annual salary hike. But she notes that she’s still ₹25.5 lakh short of breaking even, a point she expects to reach only by 2028.

“Can you afford to be ₹40 lakhs in debt for 7 years?” Goel asks, framing the dilemma not as a question of prestige but of affordability and payoff timelines.

The timing of her post is especially relevant. Earlier this week, Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath triggered backlash during an internal AMA session where he said, “If you’re a 25-year-old going for an MBA, you must be some kind of idiot.” His remark has reignited the long-simmering debate around the cost, relevance, and return on MBAs in a job market increasingly defined by skills over credentials.

Goel herself doesn’t dismiss the MBA outright. She credits her degree with enabling two job switches, a pivot from sales to product management, and the confidence to negotiate better salaries. But she’s clear-eyed about the downsides — irrelevant coursework, high stress, interest payments, and delayed personal milestones.

“MBA cannot make you successful, but just accelerate access to opportunities you would’ve eventually found anyway,” she writes.

As the MBA’s price tag continues to climb, her brutally honest analysis is prompting many young professionals to ask a different question: Not “Is an MBA worth it?” — but “Can I afford the risk?”