Our Founder's journey back to Alma Mater

Alma mater (Latin: alma mater; pl.: almae matres) is an allegorical Latin phrase meaning 'nourishing mother'. It personifies a school that a person has attended or graduated from.

An Alma Mater is important for everyone. More so for an entrepreneur because till its young venture is ready to fly on its own, it needs resources like credible workforce, advice, a brand to latch on to, early users and so on. An Alma Mater can fulfil all these needs in a very symbiotic fashion.

It has a lot of young students entering the industry who need mentoring, and look up to the founder for inspiration and guidance. All this I realised when I prepared for the Wednesday Colloquium at NIT Kurukshetra last Wednesday. It was a very busy week for me with a large personal purchase, a long vacation, a large customer requirement all were to be fulfilled in the same week.

I tried to prioritize my best and had to drop a few balls but chose to keep this meeting on my schedule. How many times do you get an opportunity to give back to your alma mater. Atleast in my case I have got only few and did not want to miss this one.

So I prepared a deck on how to become a young entrepreneur while still being in college. But looking at the announcement I realised that they were more interested in hearing my journey as a builder of products. I structured my thoughts in that direction and was ready for the meeting which I joined well in advance. The flow of the conversation was seamless when I realised how similar their journeys would be to ours, of course with some variations of the years passed.

Luckily the session ended early on technology, and I got to present my take on how to be an entrepreneur when in college also. The language chosen was hindi so that it reaches a wider audience.

I gave the session and moved on with life which is mostly work. After few days I got a message from my professor that the session has been covered in leading hindi newspapers.