An Interview With Ankur Jain, Founder And President, Kairos Society (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Ankur: The goal to take some of these students who would have otherwise gone the traditional corporate route and get them to embrace this idea that with a community of like-minded peers, knowing they have the support and guidance of top mentors from around the world, [they can] build these companies and make an impact.

Ideally, we will look back 20 years from now and say that some of the most powerful and influential people who are changing the world were best friends 20 years ago because they were part of the Kairos Society together.

Irina: Do you disclose any metrics?

Ankur: At last year’s summit, we unveiled 100 of the most innovative companies on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange. You see students here who are [working with] incredible technologies. For example, one of our students from Budapest built a three-dimensional modeling system where you can draw and model in three-dimensional spaces in front of you – kind of like in the movie  “Minority Report” – and when [asked] why he does it, he said, “You have to wake up every day, knowing that you’re changing the way young people are going to learn forever, changing the way people design the world. That’s what gets me excited.”

Another student, Jonathan Hester, who’s a University of Pennsylvania student, was going to go the traditional route into banking, but he joined the Kairos Society and decided to start a new company called Neverware with another Kairos fellow.

The company is now able to take the computing technology of any age . . . you can take a 1998 computer and operate the latest software, operating system, everything, through clouds in a completely virtual system.

This technology itself is incredible, but what’s even more incredible is the application. Jonathan went out and said, “The application of something like this is I can save schools across the country so much money.” So, he went to schools in Princeton, New Jersey, and across the United States and said, “Rather than buying entirely new computer labs, we can take your existing computers and run the latest software and the latest operating systems at a much lower cost.” He’s saving lots of money for these institutions.

Look at students such as Shakeel Avadhan. He’s one of our graduates, and he built a shock absorber that takes vertical motion from vehicles. It’s similar to the Prius, for which the brake power comes from vertical motion.

Through the Kairos Summit, Shakeel started a company called Levant Power that’s taken off and today has partnerships with private companies for trucking and transportation, not to mention Department of Defense vehicles. He’s looking at how he can significantly increase fuel efficiency.

Irina: What are the requirements to become a Kairos fellow?

Ankur: Kairos fellows are selected from top universities around the world. To become a Kairos fellow, you first have to be nominated. You can be nominated by existing fellows, by professors we work with, by our partners, or if you haven’t been nominated, you can fill out a pre-application to seek one.

Once you’re nominated, there’s an application to fill out, after which we have local people interview you to see if you’d be a fit in the community.

Based on that, we select a maximum of 25 fellows from any given region to ensure we have a community that’s big enough that you’ve got incredible energy and you get to know like-minded people but small enough that you really reach across borders to get to know the other Kairos fellows. Applications are processed on an international level, and interviews are conducted locally.

Irina: Is there a membership fee?

Ankur: No. We don’t charge our fellows. These may be the world’s future leaders. You want to support them at a time when they need it the most: as college students trying to make it.

This segment is part 3 in the series : An Interview With Ankur Jain, Founder And President, Kairos Society
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