The only undergrad b-school in India that gets you in action for the real world

Rahul Devkar

Baroda Jeweller's son joins fellowship after BSc. to gain business skills and is working with determination to provide exposure and career clarity to small town students across India

Since he was 15 years old, Rahul Devkar, son of a Baroda Jeweller has always had the hunger to make things happen, and possessed a powerful growth mindset.

“One year during Diwali, I suggested to my father to offer a 10g silver coin on a purchase of 10k of gold. We made a lot of profit that year and my father was so proud,” proudly shared Rahul.

Growing up in a family with a small business, like most families in Gujarat’s city of Baroda, Rahul had an accessible safety net and the responsibility to support him. Along with his hunger to make things happen, Rahul felt the urge to be exposed to new ideas, fields and people, and try something ‘different’, beyond the status quo aka supporting the family business.

When Rahul was 18 years old, and the time came to decide the education he wanted to pursue, he chose an unconventional choice – a Bachelor of Science in Geology! However, early into his degree, he realized that Geology did not quite satisfy his hunger. Thus, he seeked out opportunities and started working at a multi-level marketing company beyond college work, with the intention of learning new things and levelling himself up in some way. Although this kept him away from the fun aspects of college life for a couple years, Rahul shared, “I may have made only 1-2 friends in college and barely any earnings but the learning I got out of that job was immense. I have no regrets.”

Understanding the depth of experience actually working hands-on with an organization, after he graduated Rahul was looking for an opportunity through which he could keep satisfying his hunger to learn by working on real life hands-on projects. As he explored MBA programs and more, he came across the Enterprise India Fellowship on Instagram, and directly decided to join after a coaching call with Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Co-Founder of the Enterprise India Fellowship and Youth Coach who has worked with more than 800+ young people in helping them explore “what they really want to do”.

“I joined with the hungry-to-learn attitude and through each project I learned something new! Enterprise never felt like a course, I always looked at it as my family-as people who are crazy about helping me level up,” shared Rahul.

Throughout the Fellowship, Rahul consistently put his growth mindset into practice by working on more than four projects including in-house Enterprise projects like #karo & the Green Room and also on a project with a company called YellowSKYE.

The hunger to learn and grow also included learning from enterprising people like Kush Agarwal, and fueled Rahul’s engagement in the Green Room.

The Green Room (inspired by Professor David Gould’s course at the University of Iowa) is a monthly community story sharing evening hosted by Enterprise Partners on a rotating basis, where changemakers and enterprising people from different fields join to let down their hair and share their story like in a theatre’s green room (the backstage room where performers prepare and can be vulnerable).

Working with and helping changemakers like Chitra Shah (Founder, Satya Special School, Pondicherry), Palak Krishnamurthy (Founding CFO, Anibrain) and others prepare for the Green Rooms, and hosting the space for the community to be vulnerable and share stories was a meaningful experience for Rahul, and he ended up sticking to the project beyond the months he signed up for, and conducted in-depth user interviews with the community members to understand what is valuable for them, and what can be improved which inturn helped the team improve the user experience and positioning of the community story sharing evening.

“He is his own kind of leader – he takes initiative, goes the extra mile, never says no, and is ALWAYS dependable,” shared the Enterprise Projects Coordinator, Lubaina Cementwala, who supports the monthly Green Room team.

As Rahul interacted with different enterprising people and worked hands-on, on different projects, Rahul has felt his attitude about supporting his father on the family business shift- he is acknowledging the grind and has started to help out with it. While his mother is amazed by the depth of questions he started asking his father based on his recent learnings, his father has started relying on him as a calm thinking partner for the advancement of the business.

Rahul Devkar

Hometown: Baroda, Gujarat

Interests/Cares About: Small Town Youth Engagement, Fitness and Health Education
Fellowship Span: Jan 2020- Apr 2021

Plan after Graduation:

-Worked on 4+ projects including Enterprise projects like The Green Room & #karo, and a project with a client- Yellowskye
-Started a platform called Exposure with Rahul to connect with other young people from small towns like himself, to create an avenue for them to be exposed to different ideas, opportunities and networks

-Created 4 blogs and 1 vlos, organized and hosted 3+ Green Rooms- community sharing evenings, and conducted research with community members to better position the monthly story sharing evening.

Next Steps post Fellowship:
– Working on managing customer relationships and marketing for his family’s jewellery business and also working with the Enterprise outreach team to support with social media and also reach out to enterprising youth from small towns

"Proactiveness, creativity in finding a solution, and the ability to work together within a team were some of the key skills I was able to see Rahul apply through the time we spent with him at Enterprise”

Kush Agarwal

Founder, YellowSKYE

Along with learning from and contributing to all the projects he has been a part of, Rahul also invested huge amounts of energy in practicing reflective thinking and communicating- via speaking and writing. He levelled up his abilities by leveraging the monthly reflection-based content creation process (Conflexion) at the Fellowship where Partners actively learn to reflect on their learnings and feelings and harvest them into blogs, videos and/or podcasts.

These reflective abilities started improving and came in handy when workshops on life’s purpose made Rahul think of his experiences of being a student from a small town who possessed the hunger to learn, and he decided to create a platform for other young people to also have exposure to people, concepts and learning support that he has.

He started an Instagram channel called “Exposure with Rahul”, to help students from small towns get exposed to entrepreneurship, business concepts like competitor analysis, personal growth practices that have worked for him and stories of successful entrepreneurs by creating and sharing content and helping organize career clarity workshops. He also plans to start a podcast soon.

Rahul is passionate about positively influencing other students from small towns who have the hunger to grow and invest time in creating themselves and level up by taking on different opportunities just like Rahul has created for himself.

He kept creating them, “Right from convincing his father to move from Baroda to Pune to join the Fellowship to working on projects where he broke his comfort zones by getting his hands dirty in sales, designing and communications until he found what he loves doing – how he wants to create a difference. That’s how Exposure with Rahul took shape; through which he intends to empower students from small towns to explore opportunities which are now limited to only tier 1 cities,” shared Enterprise Coach & Marketing Lead, Ankita Parashar.

He has created himself by constantly seeking opportunities to satisfy his hunger to learn and grow, and wants to help other young people from small towns do the same.

“A guy from baroda who stumbled on our Instagram profile, took up a coaching call and instantly decided he wanted to pursue an experience that he believed will give him a life changing exposure, and ACTUALLY PURSUED it – you only hear such stories in movies, but now we have it in reality!”, added Ankita Prashar.

Interviewer & Authors: Lubaina Cementwala & Akash Bhalerao
Video Editor: Hiral Narogi
Story Editors: Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Yusuf Hakim, Ankita Parashar
Webpage Designer: Dnyanesh Chandewar

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