MBA Fellow rethinks credit building through product strategy at Esusu

During the summer of 2026, Rohan Agrawal (MBA '27) interned as an NYU Stern MBA Strategy and Product Fellow at Esusu. Read on to learn more about his time there:

Name: Rohan Agrawal

Grad Year: 2027

Specialization: Strategy and Tech Product Management

This summer, I interned at Esusu as an NYU Stern MBA Strategy and Product Intern. I worked on developing a new card strategy tailored for thin-file renters who pay rent, utilities, and telecom on time every month but see almost none of it reach their credit files. Traditional starter credit products often lock $200–$300 into untouchable escrow accounts while charging up to 29% APR, creating a potential debt trap. In contrast, we designed a prefunded card where the member's own deposit serves as the payment source with zero interest possible by design, directly advancing Esusu’s mission to dismantle barriers to housing stability and financial inclusion.

My core deliverables included benchmarking card structures, evaluating compliance frameworks, modeling unit economics, and assessing strategic partnerships. By integrating advanced AI tools directly into my workflow, I rapidly iterated through financial models and stress-tested strategic assumptions from multiple angles before presenting recommendations to internal mentors and leadership. This experience showed me how AI can accelerate strategic research and make space for deeper critical judgment.

This experience helped me connect the dots between strategy, product development, and financial equity. My biggest takeaway was realizing how deeply mission constraints dictate product-market fit. Anchoring our strategy around a strict guiding principle, “building a product that cannot harm the user”, proved that when mission defines your product boundaries, every structural question answers itself. It reinforced my passion for leveraging technology and thoughtful financial engineering to drive scalable, human-centered impact.