Covid-19 is changing the way we do networking, too.
Stuck at home with limited avenues to make new professional connections, many top CXOs, as well as junior-to-mid level professionals, are taking to specialised platforms like Lunchclub, CoffeeMug and Grab Chai, to talk shop with strangers online.
These Artificial Intelligence-enabled platforms call themselves “AI Superconnectors”. Essentially, they are matchmakers that use AI algorithm to set up one-on-one meetings based on users’ stated interests, objectives and preferred time slots.
The AI then connects users on email through a concept called “warm intros” and sends them a calendar invite which is often accompanied by a link for video calling.
So, is this Tinder for work? Or Linkedin but with video calling?
It is neither.
Unlike dating apps like Tinder or professional networking sites like LinkedIn, these platforms are gated communities where a user can join only through invites from existing users or by applying to get registered. Once entered, people can’t just write cold emails to connect. You can only express interest in meeting with someone in particular or in a specific sector. This eliminates the scope of getting spam messages flooding your inbox.
[Speaking of gated communities, an app called Clubhouse — a voice-based chat room — emerged as one of the most popular networking spots for Silicon Valley’s who’s who during the ongoing pandemic; but that’s a different story]
With most of these AI platforms, you connect with and focus on one user at a time. On LinkedIn, many users get into the habit of sending or accepting multiple connection requests at once.
Lockdown Impact
In the past six months, some of these new platforms have seen 100% month-on-month growth in users.
“After doing Zoom calls with family, friends and colleagues in all these months, I badly wanted to see new faces,” says Nipun Jain, 23, a Mumbai-based founder of student mentorship platform Relayte, who tried some of these virtual networking sites in the last few months. She currently lives in Bhilai, her hometown in Chhattisgarh state.
Startup founders dominate these platforms, for now, followed by product managers, senior professionals from venture capital firms like Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures, employees of tech companies like Amazon and booking.com, among others.
But they also have public policymakers, health and wellness experts, filmmakers and bakers onboard. Jain recently matched with a qualified psychologist on Grab Chai, she tells us.
Indian Matchmaking
Founded by Suhas Motwani and Aditya Mohanty, Grab Chai rolled out in mid-March. While still in beta stage with plans to officially launch in a few weeks, it already has over 2,000 members from the tech community and outside who have done 5,000-6,000 virtual meetings through the platform so far, claims cofounder Mohanty.
CoffeeMug, the other local platform in this segment, was launched just a few days before them in March. It has over 1,500 active members comprising founders, investors and CXOs, and gets 80-100 new members each day, says its Delhi-based cofounder Dipti Tandon.
The nationwide lockdown was the major motivation for the Grab Chai duo to build a virtual platform for professional networking. Motwani is based in Warsaw, Poland, and Mohanty in Mumbai.
For CoffeeMug, though, the lockdown was a call for a quick shift in narrative and strategy.
“When we began conceptualising CoffeeMug in pre-Covid-19 times, we thought people would meet in person in a coffee shop,” says Tandon.
Within two weeks of launching, the criteria changed.
In retrospect, Tandon feels it was only for the better.
“It allowed us as a platform to connect people across locations and countries. We started introducing the right kind of folks without location bias, and our members saw great value in it,” she adds.
One-tenth of CoffeeMug’s current user base is from overseas markets like Singapore, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
The First Movers
Even Lunchclub, a US-based AI platform founded in 2017, shifted from doing “warm intros” online for offline meetings to going virtual full-time in March. It also became available in Mumbai and Bengaluru around the same time, according to users who have signed up on the platform in India.
The company recently raised $24.2 million in institutional funding at a valuation of $100 million, in a round led by VC firms Coatue Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Lunchclub did not respond to ET’s queries. A recent CNBC article stated that the number of meetings via Lunchclub grew tenfold during the pandemic compared to pre-Covid times.
Curated Serendipity
For those who love to meet new people and gain fresh perspectives, these platforms offer “curated serendipity”, says Sehaj Singh, a Chandigarh-based technology professional who works at Segment, a US company that builds customer data infrastructure for startups. Singh has made connections via both Lunchclub and Grab Chai.
Recently, Sairee Chahal, founder & CEO of women-only social network, Sheroes, hired someone she met via CoffeeMug as an advisor for her company.
“That’s where the value of these platforms lies — in well-curated high-quality matches,” she says. “Otherwise, we all know enough people by now to be looking for networking solutions online.”
It’s also about access and process.
These platforms help you discover individuals that you have no direct means to connect with, says Anirudh Singla, founder & CEO, Pepper, a content marketplace. “For instance, through Lunchclub, I met the marketing manager of a big company in the Middle-East. What if I don’t know who to connect with or who is willing to guide me professionally? The platform simplifies that process for me.”
Artificially Intelligent?
AI-matchmaking isn’t always a success.
Take Sajith Pai, director at Blume Ventures, for instance. Even though he had “zero interest in networking as such,” he joined Lunchclub hoping to meet differentiated thinkers across age-groups in fields like design and writing, to name a few. But the platform only threw suggestions of people from the startup and tech community at him. “It seemed like I would get pitched at every one of these meetings, too.”
In another instance, Harshith Mallya, an associate at VC firm Kalaari Capital, got matched with a former colleague on Lunchclub.
“We decided to skip the meeting as we had spoken quite recently. But I requested him to rate me five stars (much like Uber cabbies do) on the post-call feedback form, because there is some evidence that a higher social score on Lunchclub leads to better and more relevant matches,” says Mallya.
After being ghosted by a match on the platform, Bengaluru-based Priyanka Bharadwaj ended up spawning a virtual blind-dating platform altogether and called it Dinnerclub.
Women On The Platform
At a time when LinkedIn messages have started to resemble those from Facebook’s “Other” folder, there’s very little these platforms are actively doing — other than being gated communities by default — to ensure they are safe spaces for women.
On its part, CoffeeMug masks email addresses while introducing matches, says Tandon. For the 100-plus blind dates that Bharadwaj organised — as part of her abovementioned experimental project — she would send an email to both parties 10 minutes into their video call just to check if everything was fine. “I think things like these helped me attain a 1:1 gender ratio on Dinnerclub.”
On the other hand, women form only one-third of the users on most virtual networking platforms.
Future Post-Covid
Considering the fact that these platforms caught steam in India only after the lockdown was enforced, there’s also the risk of declining usage once some sort of pre-Covid normalcy returns. (Whenever that is!)
Motwani of Grab Chai feels it won’t matter as these platforms have taught users how easy it is to meet people across the globe.
Jain, one of Grab Chai’s regular users, feels differently. “I’m not sure I would want to meet strangers regularly through a virtual platform once things get back to normal,” she says.
But neither can tell if she will be an anomaly or the norm “once all this is over”.
A more immediate concern would be the likelihood of LinkedIn adding an AI matchmaking feature overnight, leaving all these platforms redundant. LinkedIn did not comment on this.
“For now, I’m happy these networking platforms have replaced webinars and online lectures in my life,” says Jain, equal parts thrilled and relieved.
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