Historically, B-schools have been known for placing students in high-paying jobs, but there is a new trend brewing as graduates choose to follow their entrepreneurial dreams instead. Rahul and Mehul, fresh XLRI Jamshedpur graduates, have turned down job offers from companies such as Quicksell and Zomato to work on their startup, Philonet.ai, which has recently raised $1 Crore of funding.

Having entrepreneurial backgrounds, Rahul and Mehul started working on Philonet.ai 18 months ago while juggling their MBA course at XLRI. Mehul, who has already cleared the CFA and is a Dean's Merit List student, also worked on their venture at the XLRI Incubation Centre.

"Existing social networks have lost their fundamental purpose they no longer enable meaningful connections or productive conversations, with influencers and content creators dominating the scene. We don't only see this as a problem to solve, but also as a real opportunity to build a next-generation social network out of India for the world," says Rahul.

The founding group consists of Rahul, Mehul, Anvith (ex CTO of a B2B tech startup), and Aadwitya (LSE graduate with experience at EY and S&P). Their collective experience has resulted in the creation of a product that has achieved over 3,000 organic sign-ups and over 1,000 monthly active users, who have given it 4.75 stars on the Play Store. With funding in place, they will soon exit beta mode and grow their user base globally.