How to Find a Mentor in the EV Industry: A Practical Guide for Indian Professionals

Almost every successful Indian EV-industry career has 2-3 mentors in the background. Few of these relationships started formally — most were built by someone who reached out specifically, contributed value first, and showed up consistently over years. Here's the practical guide to building yours.

Where mentors actually come from

Internal: your current company's senior engineers + managers, even outside your direct reporting line. Easiest to start with — share context already exists. Reach out for coffee or 30-minute monthly chats with senior people whose work you admire.

Industry events + conferences (see the EV conferences article): a 10-minute substantive conversation at a coffee break can be the start of a mentor relationship if you follow up consistently.

Online communities (LinkedIn + Twitter / X + the WhatsApp / Telegram networks): identify the senior people whose content you genuinely engage with + reach out after 4-6 weeks of consistent thoughtful interaction.

Formal programmes: Mobility Women in India mentorship matchmaking, Catalyst India Women's Network, FICCI FLO + Atmanirbhar Bharat skill-mentor schemes. These are structured + reliable but smaller mentor pools.

How to ask

Don't lead with 'Will you be my mentor?' — it's vague + non-committal for the senior person + puts them on the spot.

Lead with a specific small ask: 'I'm thinking through whether to move from BMS firmware into ADAS perception — would you have 30 minutes to walk through how you made a similar move in 2018?' Concrete + bounded + grounded in their actual experience.

If the first conversation goes well, end it with a clear next-step ask: 'Could we set up a similar conversation every couple of months?' If yes — you have a mentor. If no, you still got the first conversation's value.

What to bring to each conversation

• Specific updates on the action items from your last conversation. 'You suggested I read the Severson 2019 paper — I did, here's what surprised me.' Demonstrates you actually use the input.
• One specific decision you're navigating + the framing you've already done. Don't ask 'what should I do?' — ask 'I've narrowed it to A or B, here's how I'm weighing them, what's missing?'
• Something you can offer back: industry intel, an introduction, a useful resource you've found. Mentor relationships die when they become unidirectional.

What kills mentor relationships

Showing up unprepared. Mentors give time generously; the price of admission is being prepared to use that time well.

Not following through on commitments. If you said you'd read the paper, do it. If you said you'd reach out to X, do it. Mentors lose interest when their input doesn't translate to action.

Going dark. A quarterly check-in with substantive updates keeps relationships alive. Going silent for 18 months breaks them; restarting is harder than maintaining.

Treating it as a one-way transaction. Even early-career mentees can offer real value back — fresh perspectives, industry intel from peer networks, technical help with newer tools the mentor doesn't have time to learn.

Where to go from here

Mentorship in the Indian EV industry compounds the way investment returns do — small, consistent contributions over years produce outsized results. Identify 2-3 senior people whose careers you'd genuinely want to learn from, reach out with specific small asks, show up prepared every time, contribute back where you can. Over 5+ years, a mentor relationship can shape a career more than any formal credential.

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