Art History of India
Know the country before you build for it.
Problem
Students spend the India term building a brand for a country they barely know.
Solution
We run a two-day seminar on India's art history with an art college, from the cave paintings to the brands on shelves today.
What it's worth
Students who understand where they are build braver, more original brands. That costs two days and one art-college partner.
Two days, the story of India in art
Six sessions that cover thirty thousand years.
The partner
We'd run it with a serious Indian art college, like Sir J. J. School of Art or the Dr. Shankilal K. Somaiya School of Art. They bring the scholars and the works; TETR brings the cohort.
What it costs
It takes two days and one partner, slotted into the India term, and repeats every year.
Understand the country first, then build for it.
The Taste Lab
Bring India to campus, on a plate.
Problem
Students build a D2C brand for a country most of them have never tasted, and rarely get a day together on home ground.
Solution
We give them two days on campus with The Gathering, a complete immersion in India's food and the people who make it.
What it's worth
They get real exposure to the country they're selling to, learned through the senses, plus one shared day that finally makes a scattered cohort feel like a year.
The partner
We'd run it with The Gathering, the food festival that treats food as living culture, full of forgotten flavours and chefs paired with artists. They bring the festival; TETR brings the campus and the cohort.
What it costs
It runs two days on the campus students already live on, so it adds nothing to a heavy travel calendar. It feeds the D2C term and returns every year with a fresh line-up.
Understand a country by tasting it, then go and build for it.
The Jugaad Masterclass
How India really does business, learned in a single evening.
Problem
Students launch brands for India without ever learning how business actually gets done here, from the bargaining to the workarounds nobody writes down.
Solution
We give the cohort a two-hour evening with a Shark Tank India founder who teaches the street-smarts of Indian business through stories and live demos.
What it's worth
In one evening they get the lay of the land and the instinct for how to source, price and sell here, without losing a working day they can't spare.
Two hours, no slides that matter
It's stories, one live haggle, and straight answers.
The host
A Shark Tank India founder is the natural fit, especially since Pratham Mittal already sits on the panel. Aman Gupta would bring the selling instinct, Anupam Mittal the storytelling, and Arjun Vaidya, already close to TETR, would be the easiest to land.
What it costs
It takes one evening on campus, two hours, with nothing due the next morning. That respects a cohort already busy launching companies, and gives them the lay of the land over dinner.
Everything India teaches you about doing business, learned in one evening.
The Improv Lab
Learn to think on your feet, out loud, in front of everyone.
Problem
Founders pitch, sell, and field hard questions live, all the time, but are never taught to perform under pressure.
Solution
We run a high-energy improv workshop, no scripts, just games that teach the cohort to think on their feet, listen hard, and build on whatever they're handed.
What it's worth
They pick up the real founder skills while it still feels like play, and the cohort stops being strangers in one afternoon.
The run of play
Five rounds, no script.
The host
Tanmay Bhat, one of the most recognised names in Indian comedy and an active startup angel investor. He carries real weight both on a stage and in a room full of founders, which is exactly why the cohort will lean in.
What it costs
It runs half a day on the campus they already live on, no travel, no homework. It pays off every time they pitch, sell, or get hit with a question they didn't see coming, and it repeats every term.
The pressure of performing live, rehearsed as a game until it stops being scary.
TETR · 22 Under 22
Problem
TETR is new, so parents and applicants have very little proof that its students are real builders.
Solution
Every year we publish a magazine profiling twenty-two student founders and what they built, ranked by traction.
What it's worth
It gives parents proof and applicants a bar to clear, and it travels the moment each founder shares their page.
TETR
College of Business2026
Contents
Why we built a college with no campus
We took a simple, unfashionable idea seriously: that you learn business by actually doing business. So we send students across seven countries and ask them to build real companies before they graduate.
Two years in, the proof is in the students. They have closed real customers in cities they had landed in days earlier, with real money on the line. This issue is about them, and about the people who chose to build the place around them.
Who they put in the room
22
These are twenty-two student founders from the Class of 2028, with their profiles built from what TETR has already shared publicly. The venture names and this year's figures come straight from TETR's own records, and the final order runs by traction.
The roster
More of the class
The Young Founders' Letter
One honest letter a year to young founders everywhere, in three editions.
On building before you are ready
To the young founders reading this,
When I started TETR, the plan sounded reckless the moment I said it out loud. The idea was to take eighteen-year-olds, send them across the world, and ask them to build real companies before they had a degree in anything. Most people in education told me it wouldn't work, and about some of it, they were right.
What worked this year still surprises me. Students who had never sold anything closed real, paying customers in cities they'd landed in only days earlier. A few of them built things I'd have backed if they had walked into my office as strangers. That's the whole bet: you learn to build by building.
What didn't work, I'll be just as honest about. We moved too fast in a few places. We underestimated how heavy it is to start over in a new country every few months, and how much that takes out of a person even when the work is going well. We're still learning how to hold a group together while the ground keeps shifting under them, and I'd rather tell you that than pretend it's solved.
If you're deciding whether to start something young, here's my honest advice. You'll never feel ready. Ready is a story people tell themselves so they can keep waiting. The founders I back are the ones who start with whatever they have and fix it in public while everyone else is still getting set. Begin before you're ready, stay honest about what breaks, and keep going.
We're only two years in, and the first class graduates in 2028. I'll write to you every year until then, and after that too, with whatever we actually learn.
What it takes to run a college that never stands still
To the young founders,
Pratham writes about the bet, so I'll write about the machine, because the machine is where most of the lessons actually live.
A normal college has one building and one calendar. We have a cohort that picks up its whole life every few months and lands in a new country with a new business to build. That reads well on a brochure. In practice it means visas, housing, partners, and a hundred small things all have to be ready in a city before the students arrive, every single time. When one of those breaks, students feel it on day one. We've had days like that, and we own them.
What we got right this year was the people we put around the students. The founders and operators who show up as mentors are the real curriculum, and a student learns more in one honest hour with someone who has built and lost than in a month of lectures. We leaned into that, and it worked.
Where we got it wrong was assuming the structure could be light. Young founders need freedom, but they also need a spine to push against. We added more of that this year, and the work got sharper for it.
If you're building anything, here's the unglamorous truth I'd pass on. The idea is maybe a tenth of it. The other nine tenths is doing ordinary things reliably, on time, when no one is watching. Founders who learn that early beat founders with better ideas who never learn it at all.
From the inside, by a student
To whoever is reading this and deciding,
I'll tell you the parts the website can't.
The hardest part of all of this is the leaving. Every few months you build a life in a city, a routine, people you actually like, and then you pack it into a suitcase and start over somewhere you've never been. The first time it happens, it knocks you sideways. By the third, you've learned something about yourself that I don't think you can learn sitting still.
The best thing is that the work is real. I sold to actual customers in a country I'd landed in that week. I've failed in front of real people, which is worse and better than failing an exam, because you remember it and you fix it. I've sat across from founders I used to only read about and asked them the questions I actually had.
I'd only tell you to come if you genuinely want to be uncomfortable on purpose. If you want a safe four years, this isn't it. If you want to find out what you're capable of when nobody is holding your hand, I haven't found a faster way.
I'm not going to pretend every term was good, because some of them were genuinely lonely. But I'm a different person than the one who applied, and I'd do it again without thinking twice.
Sample drafts, written to show the voice and format. The real editions would be written by Pratham, Tarun, and that year's student.