Proof of Work Over Pedigree: How Bhavya Agarwal Went from SRCC to Fintech in London

Bhavya Agarwal sat across from us recently and said something that most students are afraid to admit: "Colleges are not about education." He doesn't mean it cynically. He means it precisely — and the distinction matters.

Bhavya did his B.Com Honours at SRCC Delhi, one of India's most competitive colleges. He completed an MSc in Financial Technology with Business Analytics at the University of Westminster in London. He has been invited to lecture at UCL, King's College London, and Imperial College. He is now a full-time algorithmic trader and has launched an AI startup. He is back in Siliguri.

We have known him for close to a decade. Every time we meet him, we come away having learned something.

What SRCC actually taught him

The COVID batch at SRCC spent most of their time online. Most students drifted. Bhavya didn't — he calls it an "unfair advantage," being the kind of person who genuinely paid attention in online classes when nobody was watching.

But what SRCC gave him had less to do with economics than with freedom. No rigid schedule, no one telling him what to do with his day. He designed websites, built apps, joined the tech club — none of it on the syllabus. "It's just the willingness to learn," he says. That willingness, not the degree, is what he took to London.

Why Westminster — and why it worked

When it came to choosing a master's programme, Bhavya was clear about what he wanted: fintech combined with business analytics. Most universities offered one or the other. Westminster offered both in a single programme. That curriculum decision drove everything else.

He's also transparent about why Westminster made financial sense: it was significantly cheaper than UCL, King's, or Imperial. Not because it was worse — but because it didn't carry the same brand premium. "I'm fine with not paying a lot of money just for the name of the brand."

What he found once he got there surprised him: half the professors teaching at Westminster were also teaching at UCL. Academics are not tied to a single institution. The pedigree you are paying for at a higher-ranked university often comes from the same people.

Then, halfway through his degree, Bhavya was invited to deliver a guest lecture at UCL. Then King's. Then Imperial.

His conclusion from all of this: "It's not that everyone in elite institutions comes from money, or that the teaching is fundamentally better. What matters is what you can actually do. Proof of work." A student from Siliguri who can communicate ideas clearly and execute on them will outperform a Harvard graduate who can't — every time.

This is exactly the sequence we use when we help students think about UK universities on our Study in the UK page: start with the country, then match the degree to what you actually want to learn, and let the university choice follow from there.

Fintech — what it is and why it matters

Bhavya spent a while on the podcast explaining what fintech actually means, because most people think of it as a buzzword. It is not. Every time you UPI a payment, use Paytm, or get a call about an instant loan, you are touching fintech. The way banks restructure their customer interfaces, the way credit gets underwritten by algorithms — fintech.

"Traditional degrees are like Google Maps. You have all the information but you never get under the hood. In fintech you're not just learning about what was built. You're learning how to build."

The AI startup and the return home

Seven months into his MSc, Bhavya co-founded Judicature.ai — a ChatGPT for lawyers in India. It didn't scale to the vision they had. But it taught him more about how AI systems actually work than any classroom could have.

He also freelanced. And in freelancing he discovered the gap between knowing something and being able to do it professionally. "I realised what I knew was not enough. It's important to be aware of that."

When the degree ended, he had job offers from a hedge fund and from Barclays — both well-paid positions in London. He turned them down. The reason was not what most people expect.

"In London I'm just another person in the crowd. In Siliguri, in India, I have a better probability of standing out." It's the same calculation Arun made when he came back to Siliguri in 2013 after his own time away. The returns to differentiation are much higher in a less crowded market — especially when technology has eliminated geography as a barrier to opportunity.

He is now an algorithmic trader. He doesn't watch screens all day. He has built strategies and encoded them in software; they execute automatically. He is, as he puts it, trying to "make millions of millions while also being free."

His advice, in his own words

On choosing a degree: "Degrees have a half-life. What matters more than the title is whether the curriculum teaches you how to learn. Look at the first principles — maths, statistics, probability, logic. If those are solid, you can swap out everything else as the world changes."

On rankings vs curriculum: "Country first. That's your ecosystem. Degree second — that's your daily toolkit. University third. Universities are stamps."

On being young and confused: "Give everything a try. Bite more than you can chew. From 16 to 25 is more about exploring than deciding. Find the thing you are good at and love — those are two different things."

On AI replacing people: "If you are average at what you do, AI will just replace you. You have to get good at things."

If this way of thinking about education resonates with you or your child, the next step is a conversation — reach us directly or explore in two minutes with our Course Finder.