A young Maharashtrian couple has created ‘Marathi Referrals’, a professional networking platform for Marathi-speaking expats living in Europe, UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Hailing from from Dadar, Mumbai, the couple currently is based in Munich, Germany. The origins of the platform go back to 2009-10 when Alpita Masurkar and Anish Bivalkar, both moved to the US for the first time just like many others from the city, for their Masters. Anish, a software engineer himself went through struggle. They tried finding some common connections or acquaintances who can put in a word and make sure that some manager at a company is at least looking at the content of the resume before rejecting it.

 

The Indian Diaspora, especially, the Marathi-speaking expats have been settled abroad for generations and most of them are well-educated, placed in good positions at companies and are in a position to help if they wish to. However, they realised that while most Marathi-speaking people made polite conversations, the moment they heard that you’re looking for a job, they’d excuse themselves from the conversation faster than an ice melting in a 300 C weather. Obviously, the tide changed, Anish landed on his feet and then excelled in his career. He worked as an engineer at Amazon before moving into other big tech companies. All along the way, both Anish and Alpita never forgot about their initial days of struggle and as they grew in their own careers, they tried their best to help in whatever way they could, to help those struggling to start or rise in their career. Cut to, around 2020-2021, Anish and Alpita had moved to Germany and the COVID lockdown was on.

 

Germany being a dominant automobile sector, many of their friends worked in this industry and were working in jobs that were plant-based or going to office based. The infrastructure was not instantly ready to support work-from-home and people started fearing losing jobs and the possibility of a recession. This is when, on an instinct, Anish and Alpita decided to start a small WhastApp group to help their friends and build a support community for Marathi-speaking professional expats living in Germany. The idea was simple, only share openings at your company on the group if you’re ready to refer someone from the group if they’re good, ask for mentoring or job-related help on the group and someone from the group will help and do professional networking and ups killing events and workshops in Marathi. “We wanted to create a space where someone can comfortably pitch themselves or express what they want in Marathi and get the desired help or advice in the language of their comfort. Without any advertising, just simply by word of mouth, the group grew in a matter of months to all over Germany.

 

People signed up and were so happy to see that such a space existed. Reason- most people who move abroad do so to gain cultural exposure, to rise higher in their career and maybe, for financial reasons. In the Marathi-speaking community there was a lack of such support and this collective feeling was absent until now,” regretted Anish while talking to ‘The Hitavada’ on phone. The group hit over a 2,000 people not just from Germany, but also from other parts of Europe. They soon realised that WhatsApp is not going to be enough to support everyone so they set up their own company and started building a web app for it. The app is entirely built by members of this Marathi speaking community. The main purpose of this platform is to create a space for Marathi professional expats to network, help each other find jobs, to mentor and to organise or participate in events.