Internship at Zone Startups India – Reetika from NIT Rourkela
We all are happy by what we have, but the scope of surprise always lies ahead of us. Reetika was surprised to receive more than what she expected. Mumbai is a forever love and the dew of rains will always sprinkle in her garden of memories.
That was a weekday when I was sitting pouting over the fact that my dream internship at a design studio went crashing because of a mismatch of dates. My attention was caught by a new mail popping in my inbox which said “Message from your employer at Zone Startups”. My disappointment deepened when I happened to know that this one was for people based in Mumbai only. And, with that grief of mine, the days passed.
One fine afternoon, a few weeks later, a guy called “Ankur Khera” called and asked me for my portfolio and his next message was “Congratulations! You are selected for the internship.” And thus, my journey to Mumbai began.
They were a Canadian University based accelerator and had an office in the busiest building of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange Building. My alacrity soon gave way to nervousness once I saw the inside of the building. A strong “I don’t know-the-name-of-the-breed-but-looked-ferocious” dog, a visitor’s pass and a couple of scanning machines welcomed me into the building. As it turned out, I was an hour early and that was not at all a problem because I could not realize the time pass by as I kept staring at the view from the office. The sea and the sky merging effortlessly, the intimidating ships at the port, the Gateway and the Taj, they were all just a blink away. And, the office was just the startup pad.
My first day was all about observing and soaking in the work culture of the office, also the fact that I did not have a laptop on my first day contributed to it. A quick orientation about my work and the day ended. It was fascinating, but I had no idea what was about to strike me next.
My first week was a horror for any graphic designer. My laptop crashed and it had to be fixed. And that took a week. After spending 3k on the repair, and a week in the receptionist’s chair (because his was the only computer available), I finally, put myself into place and hence, the real work began. While official meetings, featuring as a part of “Zone Startups Video”, designing ads for IIT Bombay students, fixing power point presentations, designing websites sum up my internship, super cool things like 3D printing were what made the internship memorable.
The last task that was given to me took a week to get finished. I was asked to do an illustration of the office, how it looked like from my perspective. Some 7 or 8 illustration styles and 4 or 5 drafts later, I finally had a file named zone_illustration_final3.png stored in my laptop. And they loved it. What they did not know was that I had one more illustration lined up for them and I gave it to them after my internship was over. I really hope they loved that too.
Cliche it might be to say that “I learnt a lot from my internship.” Still, I would say it. I met people working with an aim to change the world for good. I had my share of experiences, be it walking from Borivali station knee deep in rain along with my laptop to actually seeing a 3D printer print a miniature of one of my colleagues, from looking out of the window and seeing the BSE building draped in grey clouds and wind howls (owing to the Mumbai monsoon and the altitude we were in) to that woman at Churchgate station who would sit in a corner timidly watching the people running by and hoping for someone to give her a penny, from the everyday verbal fights in the ladies compartment in Andheri to the sophistication of Zone Startups and BSE, I must say, that one month was worth it. And the icing on the top was I got paid 10k inspite of the stipend being mentioned in Internshala was 4k.
Ain’t bad right!
If Reetika’s experience motivates you, you can check the latest internships in Mumbai and latest Computer Science Internships.
Editor’s note- Have you got an internship story to share? A chance to win cool Internshala T and other cash prizes by sharing your internship story here.
