Est. 2016 · Bengaluru
That is the whole ask. We match 17-year-olds finishing PU college with someone already doing the work they are curious about — and then we stay out of the way.
Read how it worksMost mentoring schemes run for twelve weeks because that is how long a grant cycle lasts. We tried it in our first year and watched every single pair fall apart at exactly the point they had stopped being polite with each other. Trust is slow. So we made the commitment inconveniently long, and our drop-out rate fell from 60% to 9%.
The first six months I mostly asked about their exams. It was month eight when they told me they had no idea what a CV was and had been too embarrassed to say so.
We work with students from twelve government and aided PU colleges across east Bengaluru — Ramamurthy Nagar, KR Puram, Mahadevapura. Most are the first in their family to consider a degree. Almost all of them can name the job they want, and none of them know anyone who does it.
What a mentor does not do: pay fees, offer jobs at their own company, or fix things. We run a separate hardship fund and a separate placements team precisely so the relationship never becomes transactional.
Forty pairs meet in a room in Indiranagar. We match on curiosity and temperament, never on caste, gender or college rank.
Weekly calls, mostly about exams and cricket. We check in monthly and resist the urge to intervene.
CVs, applications, the first rejection. Most breakthroughs happen here.
Internships, entrance exams, a first paid freelance job. Mentors switch from advising to reviewing.
The pair agrees what happens next. About a third stay in touch informally for years.
“I wanted to do animation and my father wanted me to do B.Com. My mentor didn’t take a side — they just found me three people doing animation so I could ask them myself. I am in my second year at a studio in Koramangala now.”
“I signed up thinking I would be useful. Mostly I have learned how much of my own career was luck and who I happened to know. That has changed how I hire.”
“Two years sounded absurd when I read it. It is the only reason it worked.”
For three cohorts we paired people by career goal. The pairs that lasted were the ones matched on how they argue.
We spent ₹8.4 lakh on exam fees, bus passes and one laptop. Here is every rupee of it.
Thirty-eight mentees, two years on: eleven in degree courses, nineteen working, four doing both.