What I learnt during my internship at EduFund -By Mahek Golchha from GLIM Chennai

Here is a gist of my internship at EduFund with its CEO. Yes, you heard it right! I interned with the CEO and thus was welcomed to the world of start-ups! 

The categorisation of my experience that I received into the labelled sections is not possible and henceforth that is what start-up culture is. They don’t work in a set of norms and regulations. We can have a get-together on a weekday and intense discussions on the weekend. 

Being a millennial, I was also gravitated towards working in a big-name company but didn't get through any. Finally, with two rounds of the selection procedure, a case-based discussion and an interview, I got my six months long internship into a start-up named EduFund as a Business Analyst! 

Unlike everyone, my internship started in January. My friends used to ask: Who is your manager? To their surprise, I said, “I am working with the CEO”, the envy of theirs secretly boosted my confidence level and the insecurities of working in a not so renowned company faded away. 

This is how interning with a CEO makes a huge difference

The word CEO defines the personality and aura of the person. A very humble and down to earth person who is always ready to help and guide me If I am going in the wrong direction. The credits for my work, appreciation and support are what I received from her in these months. When others were getting added into an existing WhatsApp group of interns, I got my official company mail id on the very first day of my internship and thus came a huge responsibility with it. My work would impact real-time consumers and relationships with vendors. 

I am working closely on an upcoming service for the market and my work includes conversing with renowned vendors, analysing the real-time data to create the MVP of the service, data collection. I did a titbit of everything in just months. And I even contributed to the hiring of the Senior Engineer. That's the level of exposure I got as an intern. 

In-depth learnings garnered

Along with the usual learnings during my internship at EduFund, I also received the knowledge of how a service is developed from scratch. The final idea in which we are working on is different from where we started. It takes a lot of research and time to finalize an idea, and that too can be changed in a sprint of time. So, you have to be flexible enough to understand the volatility of the market and keep yourself updated, so that you can make a unique product for the consumers. 

After three months, when I was supposed to join the Ahmedabad office to experience the company culture, we experienced the entire India lockdown! As my entire internship was virtual, we still managed to have Saturday nights via Zoom call which was an informal get-together. 

Start-ups help you explore the unexplored

Apart from all the learnings and fun, working in a start-up requires a lot of hard work, patience and passion towards the work, as the workload increases exponentially, so you can’t procrastinate at any moment. In a pandemic, when many people’s jobs were getting laid off, my internship was all secured and even extended! 

The sense of ownership which I will feel when this service will be live in the market is beyond explanation. So, yes with no doubt in my mind I proudly say I worked for EduFund, a growing start-up in the domain of finance, education and technology.