WBS graduate wins AMBA accolade for AI start-up

Technology entrepreneur Georges Acar once thought of business as something quite linear – that it was essentially about selling products or services to the next customer down the line. That was until he took an Executive MBA at Warwick Business School. 

“My mindset completely changed after the MBA. It taught me to see business as more of a cube, multidimensional and multifaceted, with lots of different elements fitting together,” Georges said after being Highly Commended by the Association of MBAs (AMBA) in its Start-Up of the Year Award 2024.   

This was one of the categories in a wide-ranging awards evening held by AMBA and the Business Graduates Association (BGA) at the Park Plaza London Riverbank.

The WBS alum, who is co-CEO of new AI start-up Inquizyt, believes his firm’s commitment to Responsible AI and embedding sustainability into all its operations helped it make the final cut as one of two runners-up to the eventual winner, Script Sense.

At the awards ceremony to receive his certificate, he said: “These values are very much part of thinking about business in a cube-like, holistic way.”

Also attending the ceremony was Jane Miller, Director of Taught Programmes at WBS.

“We are very proud that Georges has been able to use his Executive MBA at Warwick to develop new perspectives on business and capitalise on those to achieve his career aspirations,” she said.

“By starting up his own enterprise, Georges certainly reflects the Change Maker mindset that we seek to encourage at Warwick Business School.”

After growing up in Beirut, Georges, 44, lived in France for some years before moving to England with his wife about a decade ago. As a Master’s graduate in Computer Science, he was generally employed in digital roles and was a board member of a software house in Birmingham when he took up the opportunity of an MBA at Warwick Business School in 2017.

Studying for an MBA

The MBA, though, took him on a rewarding journey into all those other dimensions that make up modern business. 

“I particularly enjoyed studying Organisational Behaviour, Leadership, and Innovation and Strategic Entrepreneurship,” the WBS alum said.

“Afterwards, I elected to take modules in Strategy and Global Business as well as an international module at Mannheim Business School.”

After graduating, it was time to return to France, and to jobs in AI services and predictive analysis for banks BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Crédit Mutuel before moving on to become Global Solutions Director (Operations) at Chinese tech giant Huawei.

“But I had always wanted to start my own business and apply some of the things I had learnt at Warwick Business School,” Georges said. “So, in late 2021 I started to mull over a new idea for an AI platform.”

Inquizyt was launched in Paris in April 2023, and Georges and his three fellow co-founders are now refining an AI platform that can be used to optimise the performance of businesses by increasing customer satisfaction, reducing workload and increasing efficiency. This will all be tailored to customers’ needs.

“I think customised AI is the way to go,” Georges said.

The company will be focused first on the French market, but as it is already operating in four languages, the WBS alum hopes that Inquizyt will be “across Europe soon”.

Warwick Business School has the top Executive MBA in the UK – and the second best globally – for career progression, according to The Financial Times.

Learn more about strategy on the four-day Executive Education course Strategy Execution at WBS London at The Shard.