Internship in InfraStack-Labs (Myths, Facts & Change in Perspective)

We recently had few questions on what students can expect out of an internship with InfraStack-Labs. Apart from a solid proven internship technical curriculum that the interns undergo, we also try to change the perspective of youngsters after they join us. This article is only about the non-technical learnings an intern get's during his/her internship with us.

Throughout the internship program we consciously try to change the way students think and try to change their perspective by exposing few myths & facts and sometimes kick the star out of their stardom and vice versa, get our(company's) stars kicked out of the stardom by smarter students, it is good to be always grounded, be it the company which gives internship or the student undergoing the internship.

Myth 1 - We at InfraStack-Labs have this internship program just with the intention to help and create awareness among youngsters. Interns are the only beneficiaries in this whole exercise.

Fact 1 - It is not true, both the interns and InfraStack-Labs benefits out of the program, we identify smart people who have passion to excel and learn continuously, who might be part of our talented workforce in future. Internship gives us the right & easy way to identify the talents by seeing them working with us with lot of interest, passion, patience, perseverance and giving us fantastic ideas.Youngsters have 10x energy & knowledge than us and we have real-world experience, we wanted to mutually help each other. InfraStack-Labs does not believe in having multiple Q&A sessions rephrased as "Interview Process".

Myth 2 - Engineering degree is mandatory to survive and make a living in India or you should be a doctor.

Fact 2 - To become a smart technologist, an engineering degree is not mandatory, but a smart person with analytical ability will learn everything on his own with interest regardless his educational qualification. He/she may be a school drop-out or a science graduate or a engineering degree holder. Beleive me there are equally good streams of study and opportunities like Finance, chartered accountants, company secretaryship, bio-technology, nature conservation, media, performing arts, musicians, chefs and many, many more. People getting into IT are just one of them.

Myth 3 - "DCS, Lnfosys or Mipro" are India's largest software companies.

Fact 3 - They are not software companies, but IT/ITES companies. They have definitely opened opportunities for Indian's who did not know anything about IT services and opportunities. Even many of us started the career in one of these mass recruiting companies, so we have lot of respect for them as companies who opened the gateway of external IT world to Indians. 

Myth 4 - Indian's can never build a software or platform indegenously, we do not have smart minds, and the real smart minds which India creates migrates to other countries for better opportunities.

Fact 4 - Our IT giants have been in this tech outsourcing business for 30+ years now, lot of money, but still nobody thinks of spinning off a product or platform company by selecting few smart people from their large workforce. No idea, why they don't do that, maybe the management is comfortable with what they've been doing for 3 decades which shows that they are either not lean, agile or not open for changes otherwise called "Being in Comfort Zone". There is no innovation on ground from any of these large organizations with tonnes of resources readily available (lot of innovations only as lip-service and buzzwords, nothing on ground, C-level executives to fresher in the organization gives lip-service on the latest technologies and nobody wants to dirty their hands)

Myth 5 - Technology startups from India are ABC, DEF, GHI, JKL, MNO & PQR

 Fact 5 - "ABC" was never a technology startup, it is an e-commerce website which became very successful by using high technologies and finding way to reach the big Indian market. 

  "DEF" was never a technology startup, it is an online taxi aggregator website/app which became very successful by using high technologies and finding way to reach the big Indian market.

"GHI" it was never a technology startup, it is an online restaurant/food aggregator website/app which became very successful by using high technologies and finding way to reach the big Indian market.

"JKL" was never a technology startup, it is an online education website/app which became very successful by using high technologies and finding way to reach the big Indian market.

"MNO" was never a technology startup, it is an online payment gateway/wallet application which became very successful by using high technologies and finding way to reach the big Indian market.

"PQR" was never a technology startup, it is an logitics aggregator website which became very successful by using high technologies and finding way to reach the big Indian market.

All of them use high technologies for sure, undoubtedly lot of talent, but why are they obsessed with the word "Technology" and hide their core business behind it, not sure why they hesitate to highlight their core business, is it so bad to proudly say we are a company into "Education" or "Logistics"? It's time to understand "Amazon" is not a technology company but "Amazon web services" is a technology company. What will we call companies like HP, IBM, GE, ALSTOM, SAMSUNG, TESLA, BMW kind of companies, if ABC, DEF are example of technology & engineering companies.

Myth 6 - My uncle/aunty/relative working for a two or three letter global company in US said get XYZ certification and you will easily land up a job with good salary.

Fact 6 - He/she was absolutely correct, you will land up a job with these certifications and everybody will keep working for such companies proudly for lifetime, but how long will you remain part of services/consulting wing of those two/three letter companies. Remember, those services/consulting wing of these two/three lettered companies have their product business unit too which gives you the services & consulting opportunity. Don't complain that Indians don't develop a product or platform, all of us are comfortable and happy sitting and doing maintenance & support of products & platforms deployed for a end-customer. Before blindly following somebody else's advice, just try listening to your inner self on what you want to do.

Myth 7 - The Indian success stories in print media are full truth, getting customers is easy, external funding is very important for business & getting funding is easy, Chinese & US investors like Indians very much and so they invest money in our Indian companies.

Fact 7 - The success stories of startups in India are half-truths and do not fall in those stories as they will never reveal the technique, rejections & hardships behind their success, it's not a complaint, they simply cannot tell all the challenges they've faced through a printed success story, They may give you an impression of overnight success and it might not be true 99.99% of the times. Investors from outside India really like the Indian market size and are not real fans of your Nth copy of business model. Unlike our local investors, they have long term vision, they know why they are doing it, absolutely no ambiguity.

Myth 8 - The investor's in India wanted to help "young entreprenuers".

Fact 8 - Investors never say of that, they want to invest and multiply their money in short-term, Believe me making money is not a bad thing, it becomes only bad if we make money but have no intention to help people in need.

Angel investors, they are the people who supposedly have a real investment thesis with lot of interest & passion in a particular domain, also believed to be better visionaries than VCs as they put their hard earned money into something and are very very careful about the investments, unfortunatly they lack long term vision & most of them see investing in share market, mutual funds and investing in a technology companies in same way, no passion to be part of a future but just multiply money. Nothing wrong in it, it's their own choice on how they would invest their hard earned money, but youngsters should understand the fact.

VC's create a large fund which is a consolidated fund of many investors, they act as domain experts and investment experts (Many of them have 2-3 years experienced MBA grads to do the initial due diligence, that is the funny part) and typically do large sized investments in a dozens of companies who already are having lot of customers, making good revenue and atleast couple of them will start giving returns in short period. No complaints, but it is no different from lottery with better probabilty of winning, many of them end up as portfolio managers of the investors.

End of the day, there is no free money anywhere and don't think the moment you have an idea we become worth investing and all investors are bound to appreciate our idea and line-up and invest in our idea. This is were investors from outside India are different, they have a long term vision and are absolutely clear and have right expectations on their portfolio companies inside India & outside India, their investment strategy for India and outside India are in very different purely based on what they these companies are capable of delivering.

For e.g. Outside India investors would only expect companies like ABC, DEF & GHI to come up in India. As things are changing and evolving, who knows, we may start seeing people like Jerry Yang(For Alibaba), Jeff Bezos(For Google), Ram Shriram (For google), Peter theil (For facebook), Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning & Elon musk (For Tesla) in coming days.

Myth 9 - We should be proud that many CEO's of large companies are Indians

Fact 9 - A small correction, they are not Indian's and we don't know what is this "Indian-origin" term, they are a citizens of another country and hold passport of that country, We should be taking pride in them, make them role-models and try to understand their hardwork with which they reached those heights rather than taking pride in calling them "Indian-Origin" CEO's. Beleive me they are not Indians, they belong to another nation and they have different priorities, Some of them may even not be as proud as you think in being labelled "Indians" or "Immigrants from India", they would rather like to be fully part of the nation which gave them the oportunity to live, grow in their career & helped in creating fortunes. They would definitely be more proud of their country of domicile which made their dreams true when they had plans to migrate from their native mother land. No complaints again, eveerybody has thier own priorities.

A nation would continue to be in crisis if priorities of all 100% people are in same direction and not in the interest of motherland. We believe, even if we are able to convince and change the perspective of 0.001% of youngsters with these myths & facts, our country will have a better future.

Happy Reading!