AskMentor – World’s first network connecting Mentor & Mentee
9 years ago Shalini BAs humans, we always want someone to guide us and be there to support our decisions. Having a mentor while taking important decisions in life is always beneficial. A mentor is somebody who has real life experiences and who has situation gauging powers.
Not everybody is lucky to get the right mentors in and around them. To solve this problem, Sunil Shetty, Prashanth Vishwanatha and Rajat Shahi came up with a firm, called AskMentor – an Internet platform to connect a Mentee with the right Professional Mentor.
Sunil Shetty, a retired Indian army officer, a serial entrepreneur and investor, had mentoring as his second nature. It was his idea to spread this service of mentoring to people through internet.
AskMentor is an Internet platform to connect a Mentee with the right Professional Mentor. The startup currently offers assistance in 21 varied fields including startup talks as well. This website is compatible on all devices. However, according Prashanth Vishwanatha, Co-founder & CTO, Askmentor, will soon be available for all Android/iOS/Windows apps users.
“The idea for a mentoring platform, that can link mentors and mentees, was born while I was stationed in Afghanistan. My company specialized in imparting technical skills and during the 12 years in Afghanistan I was instrumental in skilling over 2,000 Afghanistan security forces. “Says Mr. Sunil.
In 2012, Sunil decided to give some shape to his startup idea of spreading mentoring services. Taking this as the first step, he travelled, to San Jose, USA to meet startup veterans and venture capitalists. His idea took a firm shape when his senior Army Captain Harpreet Chadha, who himself is an Entrepreneur and a Harvard Business school graduate, introduced Sunil to Mark Fernandes, MD at Sierra Ventures, USA. According to Sunil, this meeting was a turning point. “I decided to reset the course of my startup toward India and for budding professionals.†He adds.
The big challenge came when he found that the domain name he wanted for his startup was already registered and was on sale at a higher premium. Without giving a second thought Sunil bought the domain name Askmentor in an auction. Sunil says, “I wanted this particular name for my startup as the name defines what it is does and thus needed no detailed explanation.â€ÂÂ
Now, with the name secured and idea formalized he set about looking for like-minded co-founders who could bring in technical knowledge, enthusiasm and learnings. This proved to be the biggest challenge according to Sunil. For the following two years he met many tech guys who were brilliant in coding but very few understood or believed in the concept of mentorship.
The search for co-founders ended when Sunil, while attending his School Alumni meet, ran into Rajat Shahi, an Engineering student and budding entrepreneur. Both clicked instantly and within days Rajat introduced Prashanth Vishwanatha, an engineering student and a coding geek into the team.
Tarun Shetty, Finance Director says, “ Our market covers a 10th grader to a budding professional from any fields because right from a student to a particle physics scientist everybody needs a mentor.â€ÂÂ
The team of AskMenotr proudly claims that this firm is a unique idea, and they have no competition till date. Rajat Shahi, Co-founder & PR Director, says, during our research we found such a platform was missing thus we are the World’s first network connecting mentor and mentee.â€ÂÂ
Sunil says, “We are lucky that our mission is in sync with the government’s Skilling India program and thus we stand to gain from it.†Askmentor plans to conduct workshop and seminars in various cities of India. The first step is to appoint student Ambassador in each school and college who will be the driving force for Askmentor according to Sunil.
So, in case you seem to be lost and are not able to take one right decision, you are just a click away. All you now have to do is, login to AskMentor.com and meet the right mentor who will guide you through.