Mentorpolis is a new startup by IIT graduates, that hopes to make it easier to search and find mentors. A lot of times, we’re faced with significant dilemmas about what decision to make – be it in your professional life, related to education, job or entrepreneurship. What would help is if we get some guidance from a person who’s ‘been there, done that’. And that’s what Mentorpolis hopes to accomplish.
Briefly put, Mentorpolis is a marketplace for finding mentors. Here’s how it works:
- You search for and explore various mentor profiles on the site
- Select a mentor whose expertise closely matches your requirements.
- Schedule a mutually agreeable time to touch base with your mentor
- Mentors decide their own charges for mentoring sessions. You (the mentee) pay the amount before the scheduled call
- Get in touch with your mentor for personalized advice and recommendations
Some sample questions that you can seek out a mentor to guide you through:
‘I’m thinking on doing my masters in engineering from US. Can you help me find good schools that fit my profile and interests?‘
‘I am very good with web 2.0 technologies but lack the commercial sense of a web enterprise. How do I get started with my idea?’
You can also view a couple of sample mentoring session transcripts here.
Web seminars and online conversations on the site are free of cost. However, each telephonic or in-person session costs Rs 500/-.
I think this is a great idea. Going by the number of young folks who seek out answers to such questions, there is a viable market out there. A couple of suggestions for them:
1) Reach out to sites like NENOnline and bloggers like Rashmi Bansal – they deal with a lot of young folks who are seeking guidance and advice about career, education and the likes.
2) Rs 500/- may be a bit steep for fresh graduates or those who are still in college. I would suggest making it more alluring to this demographic – introduce a per hour pricing and probably some discount to such young folks. In addition, introduce a ‘free mentoring sessions for the first month’ kinda deal – this will help to get the intial userbase on the site.
Do check it out and let me know what you think about Mentorpolis.
What is their revenue Model.How will they earn money.
After knowing a mentor, people can contact the mentor directly, why do they need a website.
Please ignore my previous comment, i didnot read the post fully.So they are charging on question by question basis.Thats a good idea.
@ Startupdunia Team
Thanks a ton for the feature. I think the suggestions you’ve made are quite valid. We would definitely ponder upon them and act as required.
@ Rajat
charges are not per question basis, but per consultation call.
@ All
Thanks everyone for your kind words. I hope you will all spread the good word about us.
@Mentorpolis,
I don’t know how exactly its gonna work, but still my suggestion. Instead of allowing mentors and seekers to use the normal browser, you can use a cutom created software and charge the mentors on a monthly basis for that. I have seen companies charging professors real heavily(extremely overcharged!) so that could be a big source of money.
I thought of visiting their site and search a mentor for me but having seen the IIT spammers in comments, wonder if its worth
Hay….why did you delete the founder’s spams….is something fishy?
those comments werent from the mentorpolis founders..some other folks were posting all those comments..
i deleted them since, as you said, they were spammy.
My friend on Orkut shared this link with me and I’m not dissapointed that I came to your blog.
p.s. Year One is already on the Internet and you can watch it for free.