The first 500 members: how TechVerse Enclave grew

Trophy and certificate of merit at Vividhotsava 2025
Trophy and certificate of merit at Vividhotsava 2025

Originally published at https://pranjulrathour.scult.in/blog/techverse-enclave-first-500-members. That copy is the canonical version and gets updates first.

TechVerse Enclave did not launch at 500 members. It launched at a handful of students at VSICS who wanted somebody to look at their code. Between that and the LinkedIn community we opened in September 2025, the growth came in four phases, and each one was a decision rather than an accident.

Phase one: the thirty

The first thirty members were recruited by hand — people who had built something and would post it. That set the culture: projects, not motivation. Many later communities fail here by optimising for numbers first.

Pranjul Rathour
Pranjul Rathour

Phase two: sessions on campus

The AI Mentorship Session at VSICS in April 2025, run under the TechVerse Enclave banner with Raman Shukla and Saksham Gupta, put the community in front of a seminar hall. Students who attended a hands-on session joined; students who saw a poster did not. Sessions were the growth engine, and the format is in a tech club session format that works.

Phase three: wins that travelled

Team TechVerse's first prizes at Changethon, Product Genesis and BYTEBATTLE were posted under the community's name. Students in other colleges saw a group from a BCA college winning at IITs and universities and wanted in. Results are the best recruitment material a community has.

Pranjul Rathour, GenAI engineer, Kanpur
Pranjul Rathour, GenAI engineer, Kanpur

Phase four: structure and launch

Six admins owning six tracks, a weekly rhythm, and in September 2025 a public LinkedIn community for AI, web, cybersecurity, data and startup learners. By then the numbers were 500+ members and 200+ students mentored, and the structure could carry them; see the TechVerse Enclave playbook.

What I would tell a student starting one

  • Recruit builders first; the feed follows the first thirty.
  • Run a hands-on session before you run a poster campaign.
  • Post your members' wins more than your own announcements.
  • Write down who owns what before you need to.

Communities are how mentoring scales beyond one person's inbox. If you are starting one and want a session to kick it off, that is a thing I do — see how to start a tech community on your campus.

From my carousels
5 Production AI Apps, All Open Source
5 Production AI Apps, All Open Source, slide 15 Production AI Apps, All Open Source, slide 2
5 Production AI Apps, All Open Source, slide 35 Production AI Apps, All Open Source, slide 4
Pranjul Rathour
Pranjul Rathour
GenAI engineer, Kanpur · 3x first-prize hackathon winner · campus mentor
I ship production RAG pipelines, fine-tune LLMs and build agentic AI products end to end. I lead engineering at SCULT INDIA for a 14-member team and have mentored 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave.
Open to: GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at colleges.
On stage, at hackathons and on campus
At VSICS, Kanpur
At VSICS, Kanpur
In a packed college auditorium
In a packed college auditorium
Pranjul Rathour at a campus event
Pranjul Rathour at a campus event

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