ALFA Network, the 2017-founded community that promotes, builds and supports entrepreneurship, has just welcomed its new chairperson, Naman Ajitsaria. A CFA and MBA degree holder, Naman is a family-business entrepreneur and one of the seven founding members of the ALFA Network. Besides being involved in the tea manufacturing business and financing and investment businesses of his family, Naman believes in supporting the youth in the entrepreneurial world through his passion project ALFA, which is a community of young achievers, founders and leaders from diverse fields with a similar mindset. A chat with Naman:
What is the genesis of ALFA Network?
ALFA was started in 2017 by seven founders who thought there was a gap in Calcutta when it comes to entrepreneur peer-to-peer networking. We thought we are all doing well in our individual businesses but then we are also looking forward to something extra and that can only happen when we interact and network with people of our age, experience and background. That is when we thought of starting an organisation where entrepreneurs meet and exchange ideas and grow together.
How is ALFA different from other such organisations?
There are overlaps between the other organisations and what ALFA does but our key goal is to help the young, budding entrepreneurs in a way where we can mentor them as well. We have an entrepreneur buddy program where we enable people to take up entrepreneurship and we help them in every way we can. Along with that, we help our existing members to enrich their knowledge by doing workshops and activities for them. We thought we will have a small group of people whom we can meet regularly rather than meeting just for social events. In a bigger organisation, it is more difficult to interact one to one. We have a very interesting thing called the ALFA Core where the entire chapter is divided into groups of eight. They meet every fortnight or a month and discuss every issue in a very close setup and come up with solutions regarding those.
As the new chair for ALFA, what will be your goals for this year for this community?
My biggest aim this year is first of all to take quality members and allow the existing member base to experience events both social and learning events that they do not have access to. It will help them to grow as better entrepreneurs and better leaders. At the end of the year, I would really appreciate it if my members come and say that the learnings of the year really helped them in their business and personally as well.
What criteria are required for an entrepreneur to become a part of ALFA?
We have quantitative and qualitative criteria and we screen new members based on those criteria.
What is your theme for this year?
The theme I chose for my year is ‘Rise’, which means resilience, inspiration, support and execution. We believe, together as an organisation, we can help members to rise in their journey.
What kind of events and activities are you planning for this year?
We really want to start mentoring of budding entrepreneurs in the city in a very active way. On April 28, we are calling Aman Gupta, the founder of BOAT; Art of Scent Making; World Geopolitics with General Hooda and Maroof Raza; self-defence techniques as a fitness workshop; a session with Kanika Tekriwal of JetSetGo; mind reading and hypnosis; sessions with Amogh Lila Prabhu and Deepa Malik.
How has ALFA helped you in your journey?
I am a founding member of ALFA and have been there since 2017. When we started ALFA, it was just seven people and our interaction socially used to be with our own immediate friends’ circle. After member intakes over the years, I got to meet so many diverse kinds of people who are into so many diverse kinds of industries that every time I interact with them, it is a learning opportunity. I learn something new from them and that is what I look forward to. It is great to interact with the members and to learn something about them every day.
What can budding entrepreneurs wanting to join the community look forward to?
For anybody who wishes to start a business or is into a start-up and looking for mentorship, we would love to invite them over, have an interaction with them and help them wherever we can in whichever way possible. Not necessarily always about funding, sometimes these start-ups also look for guidance and some of us have 15-20 years of experience in our respective fields.