Chapter 2: Unemployment & the spirit of ecstasy
One would assume that I wouldn’t have a problem finding a job in the automotive world considering the exposure I got in engineering with the help of Formula SAE. But I did, and why so? Well for starters, my academics were average and academics was and still is the most important criteria for companies, unfortunately. So I didn’t even qualify for any interviews of automotive or core companies. 2016 wasn’t a year of the job crisis, but it was a terrible year for college recruitments, most students that were recruited from the branch I was in — Production Engineering were by IT companies which take students in numbers they could fit in heavy trucks(maybe even by kilos, definitely not by intellect)
Quite honestly I wasn’t a brilliant student nor do I have a very high IQ. I have always been just a tad above average and always worked extremely hard to be better. Huzaifa, on the other hand, is extremely smart, has a really high IQ and very very well informed about everything around. Being a computer science engineer he is really very good at everything I am not. When it comes to software, electronics, development, I rank him among the best I have ever known.
Anyway, my job finding struggles began as soon as I came back from the Formula SAE Japan 2016 event. There were very few companies that I really could enjoy working at, and could pursue my passion — Tata, Ather energy, Mahindra, etc. All I got was either no response or rejects. It was a bad time, but during this time I decided to start studying about electric cycles.
Huzaifa and I spoke about starting something together back in college and we spoke about this after college too, but Huzaifa was planning to pursue higher education then. So I continued with my struggle of looking for a job and parallelly studying about battery technology, motors, frame geometry, etc. In the next couple of months from October, I would go on to send 100s of emails to inquire for a job, go for many interviews — car sales, dealerships, factory floor jobs, start-ups.
Huzaifa and I decided then to just build one prototype to understand more about the electric cycle. And like a million others all over the world, we ordered some parts from Aliexpress.com.
The pressure of earning money was rising and during this struggle, I also realized that I really can and want to start something of my own but wasn’t sure when. It was December and I was still jobless, a friend helped me get an interview with the only Rolls Royce service centre in Mumbai. If you were there just looking at me during my first visit to the service centre you would probably see me drooling looking at the Ghost and Phantoms parked and being worked on their.
The interview turned out to be even better than I expected, I got the job but only as General Engineer in Training. Working on Rolls Royce cars as a part of my training? Hell, yeah I was going to take it. The pay was about 7,500 INR(100 USD) per month, 6 days a week, 8 hours every day. Yeah, the pay was peanuts really but it was a start. The pay wasn’t going to support my own expenses, let alone supporting my family. I had to find another source of income, so I started giving early morning tuitions in Science and Math to school students trying to make ends meet.
Post work hours I would work on the electric cycle project every day. I used to not get a chance to sleep for more than 5–6 hours a day.
I started with learning how to wash cars and in three months I was working on the Rolls Royce engines, suspension systems, Interior systems, etc. from diagnostics to actual physical repair work. It was a tremendous learning experience and because I was working on machines of my dreams I wouldn’t even be sleepy unless there was no work of course.
Huzaifa got a job with Mozilla Firefox for a project. While working on our electric cycles project we managed to make a working prototype that we showed to our family and friends, took it around the city ourselves. I would even ride to work, my office colleagues were very excited and intrigued by it. We realized there was a real opportunity and we have a good chance if we pursue it further.
We quit our jobs in 3 months and that’s when Calamus was unofficially born.
