In childhood we read in Mahabharata (epics of ancient India) “How an ordinary boy Eklavya denied access to Drona’s mentorship and how he made an image of Drona and took the image as his guru monitoring and inspiring him. Because of his restless efforts and dedication to get the attention of his Guru, he become an archer of exceptional prowess which at-last impressed Guru Drona.“
Same in today’s digital era a digital Drona (Mohit – Former AirBnB India’s Head) impressed by his two Eklavya (co-founders of stayuncle) to support and mentor there startup. As per the story Mohit was bit reluctant too but because of continuous efforts of blaze and his team, Mohit at-last impressed .
Read How Blaze(co-founder of stayuncle) wrote this lifetime experience into story ( we added four points below) –
Step 1 : IDEA (not IIN, their own)
You can kill me but I cannot remember how did I initially get to know about this guy. All I know is that somehow I landed on his profile on LinkedIn.
Mohit was not just former Managing director for AirBnB Asia (in case you are not impressed yet). He was one of the 11 co-founders of Makemytrip.
What the heck!?
An ex AirBnB and Makemytrip fellow. Mohit is probably an immense reservoir of wisdom related to the travel industry domain.
It also turned out that he currently resides in Gurgaon, just few miles away from our “office”.
Man…. Seriously!
We had to reach to Mohit somehow.Perhaps invite him to join our board of advisers or just get to know him and tell him about us. OMG, Blaze control yourself.
After I came back to my senses, I knew one thing.
Time for hunt!
Step 2: Execution and patience
I started brushing the pipe of my first weapon – LinkedIn.
Three days passed with no dint of Mohit on LinkedIn.
I then decided to look for him on Facebook. There was no much of activity there too. It looked as if he has sank into the ground.
I scanned for the people that have most interaction with him and decided to personally contact them and ask them about his whereabouts (don’t do this at home).
Hi Pallavi..
I know this may sound weird, but please bear with me..
I am writing to you because you seem to be among the people with frequent interaction with Mohit Srivastava on Facebook.I am trying to reach to Mohit for the past few days. there seem to be no social network where he can be found frequently…
Can you tell me about his current whereabouts and how could I reach out to him?
I want to extend a very interesting and impactful offer to him. Please help me reach to him. It is extremely important to me..
Thanks a billion, Pallavi– Blaze
Pallavi was probably enjoying her 3rd vacation this year and bestowed no response on my query.
I started to feel a mix of anger and desperation. It was first time it happened that I turn unsuccessful in reaching out to a particular person. ( I was told that my outreach skills are legendary btw).
Two days later I got a pleasant surprise on LinkedIn.
Mohit surfaced. At last. He accepted my LinkedIn invitation. Here is a ray of hope. I had to do a followup quickly:
At last. It worked. Mohit got hooked!
Step 3: Try and fail (not R&D)
Here follow my reply (I felt surrounded by fairies while writing this)
Two days passed in silence. What happened now? It looked like Mohit wasn’t impressed much.
Perhaps it was about time to show him how serious we were in meeting him.
Step 4: Again try and succeed
That seriousness happened the next morning.
Here is a better preview in case you got intrigued by the image
Was this our last desperate plea? Did it work?
The power of yoga – Proven!
Did we get Mohit’s attention? We did! Not to mention the sheer satisfaction every time I do this (above).
Mohit did come. We were so pleased to have him share a drink with us.
Awesome and super talkative fellow. A person would feel like kissing him after hanging just 5 minutes with him. We were burning with questions. Mohit’s first question however was?
Did you guys Photoshop this?
Mohit was not yet ready to join as a permanent adviser in StayUncle’s board advisers (the same includes a Silicon Valley entrepreneur now living in Delhi and a product manager of Intuit living in Pune).
However the insights he gave us were splendid. The same were not just confined to travel industry and included topics like venture investment, pitching, target market identification etc. Our thirst was finally satiated. For now!
Why did we stretch ourselves getting Mohit on the same table with us?
Because the success of an entrepreneur largely depends on the feedback he gets by the people he surrounds himself with. This approach is one of our core strategy and has brought amazing bunch of people on our path.
Mantra from Blaze:
- You are as small as you present yourself to be. Give others reason to meet you
- Get a thorough research on the person’s interest before you get in touch with him. Personalized communication is a Bull’s eye. It took just a bit of online research to discover that Mohit is a musician too (did you notice the tiny guitar I sketched on the poster?).
- Be genuine and sincere in your communication.
- Take the extra leap to get the person interested in you. Be different even foolish, if necessary.
Do yoga. It pays off 🙂
- Now go out there and do some head stand or whatever it takes to get that person interested in you. If you need ideas feel free to reach to us.
About Blaze: According to his twitter profile Blaze is Digital marketing professional, writer and upcoming-entrepreneur. You can follow him on,