A guest talk reaches whoever's in the room that day. Mentoring through a public open-source project reaches a different, often larger group — anyone who finds the repo, opens an issue, or submits a pull request, indefinitely, asynchronously.
What this form of mentorship looks like
- Reviewing a student's first pull request with specific, kind, technical feedback rather than just approving or rejecting.
- Labeling issues as 'good first issue' deliberately, so newer contributors have a clear, low-risk entry point.
- Writing contribution guidelines that actually explain the reasoning behind conventions, not just listing rules.
Why it's worth doing alongside talks, not instead of them
A talk builds visibility and a first connection; an open-source project turns that connection into an ongoing, hands-on mentoring relationship at scale, without needing a scheduled session for every interaction.
About Pranjul Rathour
At VSICS, Kanpur
At an Integral Startup Foundation hackathon
In a packed college auditorium
At a formal campus event
Pranjul Rathour
Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG,
fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at
student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-11.
Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge:
- Email: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com
- Invite / talk menu: https://pranjulrathour.scult.in/invite
- Portfolio & blog: https://pranjulrathour.scult.in
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranjul-rathour/
- X: https://x.com/PranjulRathourx
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pranjulrathour.in/
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/pranjulrathour.bsky.social
- GitHub: https://github.com/Pranjulrathour
Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus
Portfolio & blog · LinkedIn · X · Instagram · Bluesky · GitHub · Dev.to
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