NNC

From now, going backward

20 → 0

The long version. How it actually went.

  1. 20Now

    Placed. Then empty. Now rebuilding.

    In third year I spent 70–80% of my time on a tech startup. It didn’t go well. The idea was too vague, we didn’t really know what we were building, and the team was broken. I stepped down.

    That’s when the confusion started. After fourth year come placements, and I had never prepared for anything in my life. All I knew was studying or learning something. College exams were: read one week before, write them. That worked, around 85%. Placements don’t work like that. So through the second semester I kept going back and forth: DSA, or my startups? Some days one, some days the other, some days completely confused.

    In the summer vacation I went home. For one month I did both in perfect balance. After that month I couldn’t keep it going. By then I had also started the next startup, Agentronics, the one I’m building now. So I set DSA and placement prep aside and went all in on the startup, while still being very confused about the startup itself.

    Fourth year. The first two weeks went to a room-allotment problem; it took that long just to get my room sorted. By the time I settled, I had applied to 20–25 companies on campus. I took the online tests and interviews for two or three of them. None of them selected me.

    The fifth or sixth one was PhonePe. A senior helped me with past-year questions, and that got me through the online test. The interview felt like the role had been made for me. Six months earlier I had written “AI and automations engineer” on my LinkedIn, and that was exactly the role that came to campus. They were fine with no-code and low-code, which is most of what I use, because I’m not a heavy coder. I got placed in the first month of college.

    The month after, I got kind of addicted to the emptiness. Slowly I’m building myself back up so I can restart the engines and get back to work. Right now that work is Agentronics.

  2. 19

    First startup. 30 orders.

    In second year I tried a quick startup with a friend. We spent about two and a half months working out pricing and getting the packaging material ready, from a vendor in a state 2,000 km away that we found on IndiaMART.

    Then we ran a beta in Chennai for three to four weeks, and fulfilled 30 orders.

    That was the first time I figured out sales. Door-to-door, Meta ads, pamphlets, WhatsApp groups. We tried everything. In the beginning we were the delivery guys too.

    We couldn’t scale it. Scaling meant money for warehouses and for delivery people, and we didn’t have it. That was second year, second term.

  3. 18

    Not IIT. An NIT.

    After two years of grind, the JEE Main and Advanced results came out. I had a rank in both, but it wasn’t enough to get into an IIT. So I got into an NIT.

    First year was kind of chill. The first six months went by like anything: setting up, making new friends. That’s it. The next six months, I don’t know where they went.

  4. 17

    The grind, year two.

    Year two of the grind, heading into the entrance exams.

  5. 16

    Studying because I chose to.

    From eleventh grade I started studying on my own, without the push from my family. For the first time it was my choice. That was the start of two years of grind.

  6. 15

    No public exam.

    Luckily, I didn’t have to write my tenth public exam.

  7. 14

    COVID. School on a phone.

    Then COVID struck the world, and my classes moved onto my phone. Honestly, I didn’t care about them much.

  8. 13

    Down the Sundar Pichai rabbit hole.

    Since I had a smartphone, I searched him up: who is he? It was Sundar Pichai. Technically he wasn’t CEO of two companies. He was CEO of a parent company that had a lot of companies under it, a conglomerate. I learned a lot about that.

    I looked up what he studied. He came from IIT Kharagpur, so the next question was how to get in there. From around that age, I kept reading about that kind of stuff.

  9. 12

    First smartphone.

    When I was 12 we got our first smartphone at home. Around the same time, one of my friends told me about a person who, according to him, was the only person on earth who was CEO of two companies.

  10. 10–11

    Science, maths, and nothing else.

    In that school I didn’t do much. I was again just trying to study.

    The one thing I was fascinated by was science. Science and mathematics were all I knew back then, because studying was all I did. I wasn’t good at sports or extracurriculars. The only two I remember doing, in my whole life so far, are art and craft, and some basic skating.

  11. 9

    New school.

    At nine I changed schools. I stayed in that same school until the end of my schooling.

  12. 6–8

    Get rank one. Don’t ask why.

    From six to nine, all I remember is my parents telling me to study and get rank one in my class. I didn’t get the reason, but I was told to, so I tried. I couldn’t get rank one consistently. I was somewhere in the top three to five.

  13. 0–5

    Don’t remember much.

    From the moment I was born until the age of six, I don’t remember much.

That’s all of it.

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Life — Neelakandan N C