Summer Internship with Whatsextra India Pvt Ltd – Parth Joshi from Thadomal Shahani Engineering College
Parth Joshi shares how his internship at Whatsextra India Pvt Ltd (a start-up) brought about numerable skills in him under the same roof. Parth is a final year student of Computer Science & Engineering at TSEC, Mumbai. Read how his days in a start-up were, and how he ended up securing a PPO.
The root of this fabulous experience took place in first week of may – 2014. I recieved a news from my colleagues that our college–Thadomal Shahani Engineering College, is organising an Internship drive. This was the first ever internship drive our college had ever hosted. I got the news an hour before the drive was going to commence. So I thought, maybe I should go and look what it is like . Not more than 25 people attended the drive from various colleges. I, being the only one from my batch was feeling a bit wierd sitting there. But it was not very difficult for me to get along with the young enthusiasts. There were over 10 companies that were there to pickup interns. It was a wonderful experience to know about all of those. Some of the companies were Mobond Technologies (sole creator of the legendary M-Indicator), Pricebaba.com (E-commerce firm), and not to forget–Whats Extra which, I felt, was little different from the others. So I decided to apply for Whats Extra . Soon enough I went through a 90 min short telephonic interview. Soon after the interview, I received a call that I have been selected. I could not believe what I was hearing at first. Well, frankly, I did not expect that I would get selected. Despite of a live KT I had been given a chance to prove myself, so yes, it was a pretty big achievement for me.
9th June 2014 was the day when it all began. The Induction took place at Starbucks-Fort. It was really good, getting to know about an astounding idea with a sip of hot coffee. Well, basically I did not have a particular thing to do in the company. Being in a startup, I had my chances to get my hands on over everything. Beginning with a website, it was a booster for my professional career. Even though it was a very basic site, it made me feel really proud that this piece of work is made by me. Moreover, the CEO of Whats Extra has been really supportive throughout the term of the internship. The next on my list was sales and Marketing. Well, before that day I had never done any thing of this sort. This work made my communication skills even more powerful, and now I could talk to people more confidently. Next on my list was designing. From designing the visiting cards to giving suggestion on the mailer design and professional presentations, everything helped me to enhance my analysing and researching skills. I started to get a feel that this is my company. And not to mention, the work culture has been really very fabulous, the whole team being very supportive and friendly, I never felt that anybody was my senior over there. In fact, there were a lot of things I got to learn from the team members which I will value in the years to come. Well, back to the topic, next on my list was Testing. I contributed a healthy part into testing the software that was prepared for the company. This part of the internship helped me enhance my observation skills. Next comes the management. The college being started, the was the most important lesson was to learn to set priorities in life. By this time, I was managing 6 to 7 people in the company. Well, nothing to brag about, I just used to take a review of the days work, analysed the work and gave a detailed summary to the CEO.
At the end of the internship, I realized one important thing– whether you are an engineer, an MBA or anything else, in the end what’s important is what you have learnt. And I don’t think any hard core programming internships would have provided me with so many opportunities under the same roof. It was an experience worth experiencing. The joy for completing my internship doubled when I received ‘Intern of the Year’ certificate along with an offfer letter for a permanent job. Yes, you heard me right. Whatsextra has already offered me a permanent job with a good salary.
Now I would like to brag about this thing a little– they are also considering me for company’s generous sweat equity program which they haven’t even offered to a few people far senior to me in terms of age and experience. I am an average student, but this one opportunity made me one of the 10 earliest people to recieve a job offer in my college. And I am really proud of myself that I proved myself worthy of it.
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