Ekta Agrawal's video has sparked a massive debate. A 22-year-old took a ₹40 lakh loan for an INSEAD master's degree, and her biggest ROI isn't a salary or a house, but friends in 33 countries and access to 20,000 alumni. One side calls it visionary. The other asks bluntly: who will pay the EMI if connections don't cover the bills?
- Ekta Agrawal's viral video argues the ROI of a ₹40 lakh INSEAD loan is friends in 33 countries and a network of 20,000 people.
- The full cost of an INSEAD MBA is ₹1.1 crore plus living expenses, so the loan only covers a portion—a hidden detail most debates miss.
- The overlooked risk is behavioral: borrowing for access without the ability to convert relationships into opportunities.
Both sides are missing the point. The real risk isn't the loan amount, the interest rate, or even the salary after graduation. It's behavioral, not mathematical. Borrowing money for a network you don't know how to extract value from is a far bigger trap than borrowing for a paycheck you can calculate.
A ₹40 lakh loan sounds like the full price, but it's not. INSEAD's tuition for the August 2025 intake alone is €103,500, or roughly ₹1.07 crore[reference:0]. Living expenses add another ₹20-30 lakh. The true all-in cost is closer to ₹1.3 crore. A ₹40 lakh loan doesn't cover a master's. It covers a ticket. The rest had to come from savings, family support, or scholarships. The risk profile of a ₹40 lakh top-up loan is very different from a ₹1.3 crore full-debt scenario.
Tuition (Aug 2025 intake)
Tuition in rupees
Global alumni network
Countries with friends
Your network is not your net worth. Your ability to use it is.
The viral phrase "your network is your net worth" sounds profound, but it's dangerously incomplete. A network only becomes valuable if you have the skills to activate it. Asking for help, offering value first, following up without being annoying, and converting a coffee chat into a career signal—these are skills. And they are completely separate from the ability to take a loan.
This is where Ekta's argument holds up and falls apart simultaneously. She is right that opportunities, experiences, and global friendships matter enormously. A 22-year-old with friends in 33 countries has a genuine head start over someone who never left their hometown. But critics are also right: networking benefits are notoriously difficult to measure and don't help with next month's EMI if a job offer doesn't materialize quickly[reference:1].
The hidden variable no one discusses is conversion rate. You can have 20,000 alumni contacts, but if you only message people when you need something, the network is useless. If you never learn to give before you take, those 33 friendships remain surface-level Instagram follows. The loan buys the Rolodex. It does not buy the competence to use it. If you're planning a similar path, use a loan comparison tool to understand the baseline monthly obligation. Then ask yourself the harder question.
What ordinary people miss
For middle-class Indian families, education loans are increasingly common, but the stakes are rising. The biggest risk with an education loan is not academic failure, it's employability. Large loans often require a parent as a co-borrower or collateral. Missed payments don't just hurt the student's credit score, they put the family's assets under pressure. A 2026 study found that high educational debt is directly linked to increased anxiety, depression, and chronic stress among Indian students abroad. The emotional cost rarely appears in ROI spreadsheets.
The financial opportunity is real. INSEAD graduates report median base salaries of €100,000 and strong hiring rates[reference:2]. But a global salary means nothing if you plan to return to India immediately, where the payback math changes entirely. An INSEAD degree costs more than twice as much as an ISB degree, but salaries in India are not 2-3x higher. Geography dictates ROI more than prestige does.
Ekta Agrawal's story is compelling because it taps into a genuine hunger for global opportunity. But the debate treats the loan as either a brilliant investment or a reckless gamble. The truth is more nuanced: a ₹40 lakh loan for a degree that costs three times that amount is not a full picture. The real conversation should be about what portion of the cost was debt, what portion was family support, and most importantly, what skills you bring to the table to activate the access you borrowed money to get. The network is not your net worth. Your ability to work it is.
