Ex-Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin to now mentor Ola and Saavn

Former Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin could have picked any major Indian corporate boards to be a part of. After all, the 61-year-old, who is on board of corporate mammoths like Cisco, Charles Schwab and Blackhawk Networks, and has in the past worked as a senior adviser to global asset manager KKR & Co. However, he chose two Indian startups, and would now mentor taxi-hailing app Ola and music-streaming company Saavn.

Sarin is not only signed on as an adviser for these two companies, but has also invested undisclosed amounts in them.

"It's a huge trend. Everybody wants to be associated with a startup at this point, especially those that are changing the rules," Sunit Mehra, managing partner of Hunt Partners India, which is an executive search firm, told ET.

In the recent past, leading Indian startups like Flipkart, Paytm, Snapdeal and Urban Ladder have attracted big names from the corporate sector and have succeeded. They now have big names that advise and mentor them, and continue to raise billions of dollars in funding.

Snapdeal founders, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, have Akhil Gupta, who is the VC of Bharti Enterprises and executive chairman of Bharti Infratel. Similarly, Paytm, led by Vijay Shekhar Sharma recently added Neeraj Arora, WhatsApp's global business head, and Ruchi Sanghvi, former VP (Operations) at Dropbox, into its board.

However, for many startup founders, it’s not only about adding glittering names to the board, but also about the connections and advices on strategy that these names carry with themselves.

Decades of managerial and troubleshooting experience comes handy for startup founders, who get benefit while entering new categories and geographies and managing cash and investor relations.

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