Here's my story
Lately, I have been speaking to a bunch of folks, and most of them asked me about my journey till now, what motivates me and how I have reached wherever I am. Read it somewhere that if more than 3 people have asked the same question better to write it down. Hence here comes my story.
Before I start, I would like to acknowledge that I am very grateful to the people who have trusted me and gave me opportunities to learn and grow, it is their humbleness and empathy that have helped me till now. Let us now connect some dots.
I come from a family, where everyone has a commerce background, runs some sort of their own small business, or is into full-time equity/derivatives day trading. My inherent curiosity for computers and passion for problem-solving made me walk on the computer science path. I am the first engineer in my family and even the first one to take up a job.
After a lot of research and paddling in the waters I somehow landed at the PES Institute of Technology. Just like every other college student at that time, I tried my hands at the Data Science and ML field, only to realize I am more passionate about problem-solving in general.
Deep down I always knew I have to join startups and get my hands dirty, the sooner you start better it is. At the end of 2nd year of college i.e Oct 2018, I pinged Sajith Pai of Blume Ventures on Twitter, seeing my passion for learning and drive he connected me to Satej Sirur, CEO of Rocketium. Satej who too studied in the same university, connected with me and knew everything in and out how I was breaking the rules and decided to learn from practical internship experiences than attending theoretical classes. While I had the flexibility of working from my hostel post-college hours, I used to bunk my classes after lunch and head straight up to the Rocketium office in HSR, Bengaluru. wanted to see how team collaboration works, how decisions are taken, and how sales calls are done. I am very grateful that Rocketium trusted me and gave me a chance.
Fast forward to next year i.e 2019 Dec. Placement season was upcoming and I knew I had to sharpen my soft skills. While I was actively volunteering leading teams at IEEE PESIT as a Co-Treasurer, I wanted people to give me feedback on how to improve my delivery. Sundays used to pass by traveling to sajapura and attending the Toastmaster's meetings there, pretty soon I took up a lot of work in the committee and moderated a few sessions too. By the end of the year, I knew I had to get a good internship both in terms of stipend and learning, I was going broke at that time. Found the list of high stipend paying companies through the website of BITS Pilani and cold-emailed Shweta Rani of Zinnov Consulting. While Draup (Zinnov) used to only offer 6-month internships, I was the only one except for a 2-month tenure, that's what my college allowed us for, with strict boundaries laid out.
Sometime in Jan 2020, MyGate came for our campus placements and my last round was taken by Diwesh Sahai, Head of Tech at MyGate. The free-flowing 1.5 hr long conversation with him changed my mind about joining Deloitte and I immediately decided to work with him, under him, and learn from him. That was one of the best dialogues I have shared with someone at that time.
I worked at MyGate for more than a year where I touched upon a lot of surfaces in terms of technologies, backend, frontend, a bit of DevOps, and others. During my tenure at MyGate, I paired up with a product designer and built the MVP version of IndiBill, that was the time I got introduced to Indie Hacking and was talking to a lot of folks, including Abhinav Rai. Abhinav used to work at GoJek alongside Ajey Gore and Sidu Ponnappa. He used to praise them a lot on how they have helped him cultivate the product thinking, how they have laid out a healthy learning culture in the organization, and how silly questions were entertained if it was coming from a curious mind having the right intentions.
That's when I reached out to Sidu on Twitter again with the request of working directly under him. Unfortunately, GoJek wasn't hiring at that time, but again Sidu after talking to me for an hour on a Sunday eve, learned about me, and what I was chasing and connected me to a bunch of people including Swanand Pagnis.
Swanand was leading the tech team as the CTO of CoLearn at that time. After talking to him for an hour I was sold on the learning he has to offer and for me to inherit. CoLearn was that place that helped me with everything I had in my mind while joining. I was introduced to techniques of building software the right way, doing test-driven development, Pair Programming, well-written documentation, writing decision records, and many more. I got introduced to the structured way of doing things. Now I look upon building software as a craftsman's work.
I had the flexibility to get involved in a lot of things, I was privileged to visit Jakarta and never stopped from attending sales calls, doing a market study, talking to parents, kids, operation teams, etc. The ideas I had were listened to, some adopted some explained why that is not relevant for a series A company then. A lot of brainstorming with the Product Managers, where I could safely lay down my thoughts if I had a different opinion. A lot of learning happened at CoLearn which I am always grateful for.