A Different World Beneath the Gobi
Project Country: Mongolia / IBD Client: Rio Tinto/Oyu Tolgoi
Abridged version of Rio Tinto/Oyu Tolgoi blog post – Spring 2026
Written By: Vivek Khedkar, Luiza Teixeira, Lee Kantowski, and Christine Ibiang
“Mongolia? Wait, what???”. That was pretty much everyone’s reaction whenever we mentioned where we were going for our IBD project. Below are a few highlights from the trip.
Monday May 18th – Grounded in Mongolia, Geared for Impact
Our first day was a productive one. It felt good to finally meet the client team in person after all the planning and coordination leading up to the trip. Later in the day, we headed to the Mongolia University of Science and Technology, and that visit gave us a clearer picture of how strong Mongolia’s academic and research ecosystem could be for this accelerator.
Wednesday 20th May – Hard Questions, Clearer Direction
This day was especially meaningful for our project because it brought together the people whose perspectives mattered most. It was our pre-mortem day, and the room was filled with professors, founders, client team members, and potential partners, all bringing different experiences into one conversation. Instead of asking the usual question, “How can this accelerator succeed?”, we asked the harder one: “What could make this fail?” That simple shift changed the energy in the room. The conversation became more honest, more practical, and much more grounded. Stakeholders raised important risks around Mongolia’s research capacity, limited full-time PhD pipelines, data-sharing restrictions, procurement and IT processes, funding sustainability, and the possibility of building solutions that solve only our client’s needs instead of creating globally scalable mining-tech companies.
By the end of the session, it was clear that this accelerator would need more than a strong idea to succeed. It would need local ownership, a dedicated full-time program team, clear governance, upfront data access policies, long-term funding commitments, and a phased approach that gives the ecosystem room to grow. For us, the pre-mortem felt like the moment the project moved from concept to reality. It helped us see that the real opportunity was not just launching startups, but building the foundation for Mongolian mining innovation to move from ideas, to pilots, and eventually to globally relevant companies.
Friday 22nd May – Field Notes and Mountain Views
This was one of our most memorable field days. We started early with a drive out of the city and into the countryside, heading first to GMIT, the German-Mongolian Institute for Resources and Technology. From the moment we arrived, we were warmly welcomed and taken on a tour of the campus. The visit gave us a chance to see the school’s facilities up close, but the most meaningful part was sitting in a circle with students, lecturers, and alumni. That conversation gave us a more personal view of what it takes, and what it costs, to become a founder in Mongolia. We heard directly from students about the barriers they face, from high taxes and limited access to capital to low risk appetite and the uncertainty that comes with choosing entrepreneurship over a more traditional career path.
Tuesday 26th May – A Different World Beneath the Gobi
This was the day we had all been waiting for. The D-Day. After hearing so much about the mine from the very beginning of our project, we were finally going to see it for ourselves. By 6am, we were already getting ready, grabbing breakfast, and making sure we were prepared to meet our tour guide by 7:30am. The weather started off wet and gloomy, but honestly, nothing could dampen our excitement.
Our first stop was the open pit, and it immediately set the tone for the rest of the day. Standing there and seeing the scale of the operation in person was breathtaking. Pictures and presentations could never fully capture it. Watching how copper is mined from such a massive site made everything we had been learning feel real. We also saw what might have been the biggest tire any of us had ever seen, maybe even the biggest tire in the world, or at least it felt that way in the moment.
From there, we visited the concentrator, where we got to see how copper is processed and extracted. We moved through different floors, following the journey of the material through each stage of the process. It was fascinating to watch the transformation up close, from raw material to final output. One of the coolest moments was getting to touch the end product ourselves. It made the entire process feel even more tangible.
After that, we took a short break, grabbed pizza, and recharged before the part of the day everyone had been especially curious about: the underground mine. Before going down, we were fitted with all the required safety gear, which we all secretly found pretty cool. For a moment, we felt like professional miners, fully suited up and ready for the underground tour.
Then came the descent. We went 5,000 feet underground, which was a little scary at first, but once we got there, it felt like entering a completely different world. Everything was massive, technical, and impressive in a way that is hard to describe. We got to see the mining processes in person, understand how much coordination goes into the underground operations, and simply take in the scale and complexity of it all. It was one of those experiences that makes you pause and think, “Wow, this is really happening.”
Thursday, May 28 – Boardroom by Day, Folklore by Night
After a few final touch-ups to the presentation, it was time for one of the biggest moments of the trip: presenting to the Senior Leadership Team. This was the meeting where we needed to bring everything together, the insights from the ecosystem, the stakeholder conversations, the university visits, the pre-mortem exercise, and our final recommendation. We walked in hoping to get their buy-in, and to our surprise, the conversation felt encouraging. They asked the right questions, not in a way that pushed back against the idea, but in a way that showed they were thinking seriously about how it could actually be achieved. The focus was less on “Why should we do this?” and more on “How would this work?” That shift felt important.
We received thoughtful feedback, and although we did not get a direct yes in the room, the tone made it feel like the idea had real momentum. There were even conversations about the recommendation potentially being taken to the board, which was exciting to hear after weeks of intense work. After the meeting, we went out to watch a Mongolian traditional folklore performance. For one hour, we were immersed in music, dance, and cultural storytelling, and it was beautiful to see another expression of Mongolia’s talent and heritage.
Friday, May 29 – Final Slides, Full Hearts
The final day had finally arrived. After months of research, meetings, interviews, ecosystem visits, late-night edits, and countless rounds of discussion, this was the day we would present everything we had learned.
As the room filled up with 60+ participants, it felt like everything had come full circle. We were no longer just sharing a class project. We were presenting five months of work, built from research, stakeholder conversations, field visits, and real insights from Mongolia’s innovation ecosystem. During the event, we walked the audience through what we had been working on, why it mattered, what we had learned, and how we believed our client could help build a stronger mining-tech innovation pipeline in Mongolia.
The event itself was lively and engaging. We had two panel sessions, and it was exciting to see the room fully present, listening, asking questions, and contributing to the discussion. There was a real sense of shared ownership in the room, as if the idea had moved beyond our team and was now becoming part of a broader ecosystem conversation.
After the presentation, the client team surprised us with gifts and kind words of appreciation for the work we had done. It was a really thoughtful moment and a meaningful way to close out the project. We ate, networked, took pictures, laughed, and spent time with the people who had helped shape our understanding of Mongolia over the past two weeks.
By the end of the night, we felt deeply grateful. This experience had been eye-opening for every one of us on the team. It pushed us to think beyond slides and frameworks, and to understand what it really takes to build something meaningful in a local context. Later that night, back at the hotel, we packed our bags for the morning flight home, tired but proud of everything the journey had become.
