Recent BSc Management graduates Anuj Kejriwal and Jahnvi Jhaveri spotted an opportunity during COVID-19. Learn how they used their student network to help start ups and small to medium sized businesses.

Finding and creating opportunities

Small and medium enterprises, start-ups, and charities make up more than 90% of the global professional economy. When any crisis hits, whether economical or natural, these organisations are the first to be impacted but the last to be rescued.

When COVID-19 hit the world, both organisations and students were put in rewind. As this crisis worsened, we saw these hardships ubiquitously, which made us want to leverage student networks around the world to help these businesses.

This kicked off ReShape Co.

Setting up a pro-bono consultancy

ReShape Co. is a pro-bono consultancy that is built upon a network of students from prestigious universities around the world with the objective to help organisations respond to business downfalls caused by COVID-19. For the organisations we offer fresh and blended global perspectives. Whereas the students get access to real-world clients with a unique set of challenges.

ReShape Co. from ideation (1^st June 2020) to launch (14^th June 2020) to execution has been completely online.

Throughout our degree we were able to take a diverse range of modules that truly gave meaning to the word “Management”.

Here are three ways our BSc in Management helped us to find and create opportunities during a pandemic:

1. Motivating workers
   By allowing us to delve into Finance, Marketing, Organisational Behaviour, Accounting, and Strategy, the process of setting up ReShape Co. without professional help was made easier. It is not that we go back and look at our lecture notes, but more the mindsets and thought processes they cultivated. For example, one of our challenges was motivating workers without pay, wherein our learnings from Organisation Behaviour really helped.
2. LSE Societies
   LSE as a university nurtures a professionally motivated culture through their societies. We ourselves were involved in the leadership of LSE Business and Investment Group: London Strategy Group and LSE Entrepreneurs.  During these roles, we interacted with students and professionals from various backgrounds, which has accentuated our inter-personal skills. We took a lot of inspiration for ReShape Co. from the management of these societies.
3. Alumni network

Even after we graduated, much of the resources that were at our disposal before remained actively available to us. Through LSE’s focus on relations with alumni , many of our previous counsellors and advisors supported our initiative giving us reach to a greater audience through LSE’s various social media platforms. Furthermore, other LSE Alumni gave us resources and provided us with a training module for our consultants to be better prepared for our clients.

Looking to the future

Currently, ReShape Co. is seeing new opportunities and growth every day, but now the next challenge is to make ReShape Co. self-sufficient but still remain pro-bono.

Watch the below video of our journey so far.