The Matrix Advantage

A few years ago, when Nikhil Sama started recruiting top execs for Snaplion, his app-building startup, he first reached for his phone. To find “like-minded” engineers and programmers, he looked no further than where he had worked before. Sama hired Anikendra Das, an IIT Kharagpur engineer he had met during a stint at Rocket Internet, which had inc­u­bated online retailer Jabong. “I’d pra­ctically put together most of the team at Jabong and knew Das would be a good match,” says Sama. In the intervening years, Anikendra Das had unsuccessfully tried to start a social media site—but neither could care less. “I knew we both had the same vision, we were confident the exp­anding mobile network would give our venture a big boost,” says Das.

This, in a nutshell, is how the modern alumni network works: it isn’t just the school or college you went to. In the hypernetworked age, ‘alumni’ means practically everyone you’ve met, or known, as a student or in professional life. Even chance encounters could mean more than mere pleasantries.

“The only limitation is that a recruit must pass muster vis-a-vis the company’s goals,” says Kunal Mehta, who runs Inloyal, a digital loyalty platform for retailers. The Bombay University graduate hired two full-time employees from his undergrad college, one from the postgrad school, and an intern from his alma mater too. “When we started hiring, I found few applicants. I got in touch with former teachers and found the right people—with alumni, there is a sense of comfort. And I find it fits the budget as well,” says Mehta.

Companies insist that one shouldn’t get the impression that hiring an alumnus or former co-worker means standards are relaxed. “If we don’t find the right candidate after three months of looking, we take a break. We only pick those who fit the job,” says Mehta.

“I don’t visit mixers to convince people to give to charity. I attend to see if there’s something I can learn. I work from Mumbai, but I happened to be in town when I received a mailer about this event. And I thought, ‘I have heard a lot about such events, let me see one of them at last.’”

Dhaval Udani
IIM Ahmedabad, 2009,  CEO, GiveIndia

Quite aware of the trend, the country’s top B-schools are working overtime to jump-start alumni networks. IIM Calcutta, says Prof Ashok Banerjee, its dean in charge of new initiatives, looks at engaging with former students as a “lifetime” activity. “Placement is just one objective. We try and bring projects from ex-students, who are now working, to our senior classes. We have an alumni-supported incubation unit. The idea is to allot short-term projects to students while providing marketing experience,” says Banerjee.

Coming as it does with the backdrop of an economic slowdown, networking has another key aim: allowing people the chance to reinvent a career at the drop of a hat. “I couldn’t emphasise enough on the need for older and you­nger professionals to reinvent themsel­ves. Networks provide the opp­­o­r­tunity to do so,” says Salil Agrawal, a 1983 batch IIM Ahmedabad graduate who runs a consultancy firm in Gurgaon. Agrawal steers a regular pan-IIM get-together (under IIM Ahmedabad’s auspices) in Delhi and Gurgaon. You could say Agrawal’s key currency is networking. As a young professional starting out in Bhopal he had floated a similar group, but it’s the networking in the capital and around that he has most confidence in now. “There was no e-mail back when I was in Bhopal. Today, if I e-mail a hundred people, I know at least 40, sometimes 60, will show up,” he says.

Not all who turn up are from IIM Ahmedabad. Over the last couple of years, even the age-group range has broadened—a typical gathering includes all kinds: from IIM-ers on a break and those looking for startup funds to those who have retired long ago or are well-entrenched in the corporate sector. Former government employees, textile exporters, electronics manufacturers, head-hunters, consultants, small-business owners, it-bpo honchos—all gather to meet and share a drink or two or more, hoping to find the right opportunity.

Rahul Agarwal, nearly a decade Salil’s junior, runs an insurance advisory firm and helped start his networking effort. They had been meeting for after-work nightcaps for years in Gurgaon. “One day, we decided it was really boring for just the two of us to meet. We sent out a mailer inviting others, not knowing if they would show up. A hundred did—the bar was chock-a-block, there wasn’t room to stand,” says Rahul. There’s been no looking back, as they say, and the event has spread to Delhi as well. Both he and Salil say they found clients and occasionally even scored business deals at the Delhi get-togethers.

“I’m here just to meet up with the old batch. I’ve attended get-togethers in Bombay too. This is my first time in this particular mixer, but I’m not here to step towards entrepreneurship. Maybe I’m risk-averse. But seniors, batchmates and friends, these are the big draw for me.”

Piyush Kharbanda
IIM Ahmedabad, 2009, Works in PE Fund ‘Multiples’

Typically, institutes are so busy teaching—and the students so caught up with coursework—that networking is left for post-student life. With the stakes so high in the business world, this is cha­nging rapidly. At IIM Bangalore for ins­tance, the alumni network has gone well beyond the placement cell and the occ­asional visiting lecturer. The institute now has a full-fledged office for its alumni association, headed by Prof Rakesh Godhwani, a 2004 IIM Bangalore grad. His key success, he says, was raising Rs 1 crore after bringing together a group of graduates from IIM Bangalore’s very first (1976) and 1986 batches to loosen pursestrings for the institute.

“Often, I’d hear of alumni who were a little upset by how they were appr­oached by their alma mater only when the institution needed something—like money, or jobs for those passing out. We changed this. We never reached out just for donations. We tied our goals with the institute’s goals. We made it convincing,” says Godhwani.

A turning point came in December 2011, when IIM Bangalore’s 25th reunion was held. “The director spoke about the goals and purpose of the inst­itute so clearly and loftily that we decided to support it on the spot,” says Sunil Kumar, a 1986 passout, now MD at Inventus Capital. He and others of his batch pledged, at the reunion itself, that they would donate Rs 1 crore to fund research for a “1986 Fellow” research position at the institute. Around half the amount has been collected already, and the first fellow has been appointed this year. “Our group circulated a form at the reunion itself, signed it, and started adding to the kitty­—that’s how convinced we were,” says Kumar.

“I’m in transition phase before starting my own venture. I like to bounce ideas off people in such mixers. I’m looking for a person, one with 20-30 years of experience, an entrepreneur who can help me avoid pitfalls—and also identify possible funders. Mixers are good for checking if IIM ka tempo theek hai.”

Mudit Khandelwal
IIT Kharagpur, IIM Ahmedabad, 2011

Badri Prasad, who graduated in 1976 from IIM Bangalore, also joined another group of alumni who contribute to a fund taking care of the fees and other expenses of a differently abled student, preferably a woman. “We are the first batch from the institution, and we have created a small corpus—but the good part is that, the more people contribute, the more it can grow,” he says.

Tales of alumni networks reshaping themselves are legion today—of parents creating scholarships in the name of their children, of endowments created by alumni to help study and research in a particular subject area, to the extent that today academic administration its­elf is well on the way to becoming an independent profession. The push has come from the long list of successful and well-placed alumni that almost every top B-school can boast of today. For ins­tance, the Management Development Institute (MDI), which trains mid-career managers in its Gurgaon campus, boasts of Vivek Raina, director, Asia Pacific at Oracle; Vishal Bhatia, a director at Reckitt Benckiser; and entrepreneurs such as Meenu Kohli, founder of the UK-based Winetage Investments, which manages assets over £250,000.

The network of MBAs has now widened to include the civil services in India as well as international businesspersons. Everywhere, the motto is: stay in touch. As Snaplion founder Sama (he passed out of University of Chicago in 2004) says, “The university has around 1,500 people in India. People fly in from around the world to attend. You could say it is a solid network—we had lunch with Raghuram Rajan (also from University of Chicago) a month ago.”

And Indian institutes are catching up too. Prof Dhruv Nath, who heads alumni relations at MDI Gurgaon, says the larger purpose of bringing alumni on a common platform remains the same: guidance and mentorship. “Alumni can effectively communicate the present industry scenario and help us develop our own management programmes,” he says. Immediate goals, however, are more concrete, say, a summer internship for a current student—an essential stepping stone in today’s bigger walk up the corporate ladder.