Suma Sundararajan heads graduations at SV.CO. She efficiently spends her time on boarding world class partners to Startup Village Collective. She played a key role in bringing Facebook to Startup Village Collective.
She interacts with student startup founders through Office Hours (1–1 mentor session) to understand their career plans, skill sets, passions, hobbies and on other side she works closely with startups, investors, accelerators and bring them on board to the collective.
If you are planning to join SV.CO or part of our collective here are few pointers on how graduations work at SV.CO
Suma explains
At SV.CO, we offer students with startup internships in between their program so that they learn to build campus startup by actually working at startup.
Graduations at SV.CO are like your college placements but we cater majorly to the startup ecosystem in India. Unlike college, we offer 5 different ways to graduate which include getting funded by investors, joining world class accelerators, getting acqui hired by startups, getting hire by startups, pursuing higher studies/fellowships.
1. What does Internship to Graduation at SV.CO mean ?
Founders who are approaching or completing beta prototype will be eligible for an internship with partner companies of SV.CO.
Graduation at SV.CO means having more than one choice in doing what you like to do after completing your College education.
Students who complete the SV.CO program and finish their college, will have multiple options to choose from based on their interest on what they would like to do post college; exciting job, aqua-hired as a team, pre-accelerator program to continue the startup journey, seed funding to focus on product building and higher studies.
2. Why should I do an internship while building a campus startup?
Internship will give the founders an exposure to working in a startup environment and an opportunity for startups to look at Founder talent for Hiring/Aquihiring/Investing opportunities during the end of your SV.CO program.
3. What is the eligibility for graduations at SV.CO ?
Graduation options are available for those who complete SV.CO program as well as complete their college coursework.
There are 10 levels in SV.CO Program. Looking at your progress you shall be open for graduation options once you clear Level 5 where we shall start guiding you to the appropriate graduation track out of the 5 tracks and once you complete Level 10, your team is eligible to avail all the options.
4. What are the key roles SV.CO opens up for the Founders who graduate?
Key roles include
Developer — Back/Front-end Developer (web and mobile) or Full Stack
Designer based roles — UI/UX, Graphic and Visual Designer
5. Flow from Internship to Graduation
As soon as the team finishes Level 1, orientation towards internship and graduation will begin.
Office hour will be scheduled with the Graduation faculty as and when the startup team completes certain earmarked levels (Level 1, before Level 4, after Level 5, about to finish the last semester in College).
6.Key things to keep in mind for graduation at SV.CO
- Preparation for graduation begins as early as start of the Program
- When you choose an idea, work with it passionately
- The idea you have chosen may or may not be unique in which case how you approach is very important
- Understand the decisions you have made towards building your product
- What is your role, and how did it help the Product
- It is alright, if you have pivoted, the journey of learning is what is important
- Ability to communicate clearly
7. How does SV.CO help you during graduations ?
- Give you complete awareness on all the graduation tracks at SV.CO
- Help you understand on how partner companies work
- Access to Pre- Accelerator programs for student teams who wish to continue building a startup post their college graduation.
- Help you prepare well before interviews with startups or investors or accelerators
- Connect you with relevant Alumni who will help you in graduations
- Provide recommendation for application to Universities.
- Personalised content for preparing well for interviews
- Solutions or tips to satisfy your anxieties
- Showcasing support and creating confidence
- 5 year graduation support to all the students part of our collective.
Finally ,
We will be there for you :D
