Stoa Digest #44: Its Masala Time

But first, lets hear from an alum

Apr 18, 2022

Hello hello dosto, Shelton here taking over from Nicaia (who’s on a well-deserved break, can you believe it’s Week 44 of the Digest?! oof)

Continuing the streak of editorial takeovers by C4 alums, this one’s brought to you by Ankit Dev, lets goo!

Before I take a trip to memory lane, I want to commend all the past writers of Stoa Digest. I hold them at a very high regard after writing my own.

Last week in Delhi’s Chhole Bhature party, was my chance to realize the power of the Stoa community in person. Obviously, we all know how strong as a brand Stoa has become online but it was crazy to see 100s of strangers assembling at a place, too far from home for many to come just to satisfy taste buds.

They were all there to build their understanding of Stoa and to validate their inner urge to be a part of this ever-blazing community.

It was overwhelming to see people approaching us and asking their doubts.

While talking to strangers, answering their questions, never for a moment I felt any reluctance. That made me realize how far I have come and what this community has done to once a hard-core introvert person.

Stoa has been once in a lifetime experience for me and it was all by luck. Being an avid user of LinkedIn, while scrolling through my timeline I noticed Aditya’s 100 Days of MBA post (maybe someone from my connections liked it) and it looked interesting. Immediately I visited Aditya’s profile and that’s how I got to know about Stoa.

I wasn’t actively looking to join any course but after visiting Stoa’s website, just out of curiosity I filled out and submitted the admission form along with the video. Cut to three days later, I was in a GD with four other folks.

That’s how it all started and today here I am writing digest this week.

“Come for the learning, stay for the community” - Whoever said this but this line perfectly summarizes my experience so far.

There have been countless instances to remember and cherish in the past six months. Be it Case weekends, Community nights, Team discussions, Final Case presentations, Graduation night, or the blockbuster C4 Goa trip.

Loved how folks from different backgrounds, ages, locations, and experiences came together and create magic (Shouout: Magik).

My only expectation from Stoa in terms of outcome was to get support in moving back to the startup ecosystem which obviously has been achieved. But that’s not all I’ve got.

Now I have -

A 500+ people strong community to go to in case of any doubt, help, or just casual catchup.

Our lovely +97 tribe for random chat, trip plan, or sometimes cheerleaders when you need it.

Access to industry best mentors, career coaches, and trainers, just a message (insert Stoa as a reference) away.

And obviously the great Stoa team, for everything that includes the above or doesn’t.

For me, Stoa is not a learning or career shift platform it’s a mindset shift program.

It’s amazing to see the pace at which the Stoa community is growing and suddenly within a month of graduating we are 4 Cohorts old.

Have fun, meet often, and create FOMO.

- with love, Ankit C4

You can find Ankit on socials here:
Twitter | Linkedin

📣 Announcements 📣

Before we get to our announcements, there’s something I’d like to share with you.

This April is the culmination of two milestones for us in the Community team

A few months ago we decided to open up the community and let fellows sign up as Moderators to work with us in enhancing the community experience at Stoa School.

And together 16 fellows & alums came together to be our first group of Community Mods or Stoa Police (unofficial name) from December to March 2022.

A special thank you to Shonik Agarwal, Rishabh Sonker, Aarti Maheshwari, Aayush Mittal, Aum Ravi, Divya Haritwal, Kevin Kariappa, Kritika Jain, Manasi Thaken, Aashi Maheshwari, Ujwal Ratra, Mohit Jain, Sriram N G, Kevin Kariappa, Omesh Achhpeliya & Srinidy Ravichandran for helping us put together amazing events, making our Discord one of the best places to be and all the invisible things that you have done to make this community a better place for everyone. (psst, something coming your way soon!)

And now their watch has ended (for some)

We’ll be announcing our new Mods, for April - June, in next weeks digest, a few familiar faces and many new ones!

Onto the next milestone, it’s just over a year since we kicked off fellow-run events, from Quiz nights, to kakshas to amphi & cafe sessions. These were initiated and led by the lovely members of our community.

Another special and longer thank you to Priya Nain, Vikrant Mehra, Sindhu Jetty, Roshni Chandrasekar, Yash Singh, Abdul Poonawala, Gobind Manuja, Mridul Sharma, Sameer Mohan, Tanishka Goel, Abhay Sharma, Anurag Srivastava, Ishaan Kohli, Leesha Agarwal, Pranav Manie, Priyank Mody, Saumya Saxena, Shaurya Aggarwal, Aditya Raja, Ankit Dev, Bhavya Suneja, Goutam Naik, Jay Joshi, Omang Agarwal, Sharad Dubey, Vignesh Kannan, Akshay, Apoorva, Sanskaara and more from C1 to C4 (psst, you get something special soon too!)

C5, C6 & C7, we’re looking at you to keep this legacy going and we’re quite excited for some of the events being put together for the next few months!

Speaking of which, onto the Community Announcements!

This Tuesday we’re back with another Kaksha session run by Mirnalini (who’s name I shall correctly pronounce one day) on Vision Boarding, which is a great method of putting together & structuring ideas/thoughts around your goals.
Guess who’s back?! Back again?! Tbh we didn’t think newer cohorts would know about Krish until a bunch of C5 & C6 fellows send us questions around the Masala Lab session, and when we reached out to Krish he was more than happy to come back with a whole bunch of new flavours. So this Thursday, its the Threequel, Masala Lab 3.0 see you then! (ps. don’t forget to register to get the session link)