22 year old young entrepreneur, Ooshma Garg is the founder of Anapata (means ‘find, attain, and achieve’ in Swahili). Anapata is a networking platform aimed at connecting diverse law students, attorneys, and socially minded law firms via online technologies. The company has been based in California since its foundation in 2008.
Ooshma had the idea for Anapata when she was in college. She was co-president of networking group, Stanford Women in Business, at the time. She would regularly get large corporate firms offering $5,000 or so to network with those who are a part of the group. This was a start, but firms tended to be pretty poor at then going on to recruit from a diverse set of applicants. This is how Anapata was started.
The diversity-focused recruiting and networking platform for the legal profession, was started with $80,000 of her own capital. She then went to work at Morgan Stanley during the summer, where she realised it was time for her to seriously pursue her dream, of owning her own business.
The young entrepreneur charges law firms between $2,500 and $20,000 per annum for access to a highly targeted database of diverse job seekers in law. So far 70 per cent of clients have renewed their subscription and Anapata has double its user base in the past year.
Ooshma didn’t stop there; she has expanded Anapatas offering by adding an Analytics tracker to further increase the value of Anapata to users. This tool tracks the detailed perceptions of those in the database about the employers in the law field. She says that two thirds of subscriptions see the analytics tool as the main feature of interest.
Ooshma Gargs plan of action for the year is too increase investment in the firm, so as to be able to add a large following of Business School students to the database which currently has around 4,000 student lists. The company is still a little under the radar and so she hopes this move into a wider audience will also boost the profile of Anapata among a wider audience.
Mentored by the likes of Aaron Patzer founder of Mint.com and Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist, Ooshma certainly has the help and knowledge around her to match her ambition. With the greater importance networking is taking in our lives, I’m sure that Ooshma Garg will take Anapata far. So watch out, seems another success story is in the making.
