For Monisha Varadan and Joachim Vandaele, life is not quite how they envisaged it when they enrolled in the Insead MBA just a year ago. Next month, they are due to become owners of a large internet training company. It has been a particular surprise for Varadan – a former journalist who then worked in the City of London – because it was at Insead, she says, where she had her first experience of entrepreneurship.

Indeed it was just six months ago that Varadan, 30, and Vandaele, 32, first worked together, during a course designed to identify companies ripe for a buy-out. Now they have constructed a business plan, raised private equity capital and put their lessons into practice. “The real test of the MBA is when you go back to the real world to test your learning,” says Vandaele, a former banker and consultant.

Although the numbers are still small, a growing percentage of MBA graduates are opting to become entrepreneurs. At MIT Sloan, 8.4 per cent of MBA students who graduated in 2010 started their own companies on graduation, one of the highest proportions to date. At Harvard Business School, between 35 and 45 students followed the same path.