Map Creator Community Program at HERE
Hello there! I hope you’re in good health. Since childhood, I have always been fascinated by computers. This has led me into choosing a path in the field of Computer Science but the pandemic hit hard on all of our dreams. I have been upgrading skills in my subject from the day 1 of lockdown and kept trying for the perfect opportunity and it was in April of 2021 when I saw the chance to apply for an internship to work on the HERE Maps application. I applied for it as soon as I saw HERE.
For those of you who are unaware, HERE Technologies is one of the prominent leaders in the market with their current base operations in Netherlands while its roots go as far as 36 years as of 2021. Before you say there are better alternatives, keep in mind that HERE primarily works in the B2B segment. They provide top notch location and navigation services to leading companies such as Amazon, BMW, Oracle, and many more. Audi, BMW, and Daimler held 74% whereas other notable companies like Intel, Mitsubishi and NTT, Bosch currently hold as much as 50% stake in the company.
Soon, my application was shortlisted and I was selected for the 2 month internship at HERE Solutions India Pvt Ltd. I was also happy that many of my friends were also selected. We we soon briefed about the company and our work by Mr. Abhiram A. Athavale, Data & Community partnerships Lead — West. In the following two sessions, we were introduced to the HERE Map Creator tool and trained on all the tool features. On 8th June, we have received communication that our project has begun. We were told to make a team of 7–10 and I was chosen to be the team lead. Our KPI and product requirement was set as 25 valid new places/POIs and 25 valid new PA per intern per day.
A competitive spirit was found among all the interns as we were regularly given the leaderboard. The internship is usually done at the HERE workplace in Mumbai but we were given work from home due to the pandemic and lockdown restrictions. It would have been very lonely to work from home but I feel really grateful for having Mr. Abhiram Athavale for introducing us to the leaderboard which made our time at HERE more as an interactive game than just traditional internship work. He was very down to earth and always open to any suggestions.
I have constantly managed to stay in the top 10 of the leaderboard and also inspired some of my teammates to do the same. I liked that another team of my friends have also kept the same spirits and we kept raising the bar for each other. The final leaderboard was shared with us in the second week of August and I am very excited to say that I was the top performer with my work being the best and highest among 83 interns from my university. My proudest moment is when I came to know that 4 others from my team were also in the top 10 of the leaderboard which meant that more than half of my 9 member team had performed better than most of the interns. All the interns who successfully reached the set targets were given Project Completion Certificates and each of the top performer was also awarded with a Map Campion Certificate.
It was a great journey with HERE and I hope my experience will galvanize all of you. I have to thank the Placement Committee at Bennett University for providing me with this opportunity and Mr. Abhiram Athavale for assisting us and being a companion though out our time at HERE.
