Utkarsh Amitabh Wins India UK Achievers Award

Utkarsh Amitabh, who was a Chevening Fellow hosted by St Cross College in 2022, has won the India UK Achievers award. He founded one of the world’s largest mentorship and career advancement platform, Network Capital; became the Chief Marketing Officer of 5ire.org, a blockchain unicorn valued at U.S.$1.5 billion; authored two books; and helped build India’s first smart village. 

As someone who always wanted to build a meaningful bridge across both countries, I am delighted to be conferred the India UK Achievers Award.

While working in business development for Microsoft, Amitabh began a passion project that entailed mentoring students and young professionals in his network during weekends.

As the mentoring project grew in scale, Amitabh began wondering about the potential for a platform that connects mentors with mentees and creates personalised learning paths for students. 

This is where Amitabh had the idea for Network Capital — the career advancement platform he founded in 2020, which now has more than 200,000 members and enables mentorship for 7.5 million school students.

In 2022, Amitabh was among the 12 Chevening Fellows hosted by St Cross, where he completed his book Passion Economy and the Side Hustle Revolution, which was published by Penguin on March 20, 2023.

“Learning from the professors and other Fellows at St Cross helped me to come up with new ideas for my mentorship platform, inspiring me to launch a new suite of products that democratised mentorship across emerging markets, especially India” Amitabh said. “I look forward to giving back to the St Cross community and the University of Oxford.”

In the future, Amitabh aims to teach, provide mentorships and offer internships and jobs to St Cross and University of Oxford alumni.