Learning by Doing at CashPositive

If done right, an internship can mean much more than a certificate. As I recount my first internship experience, it is hard to restrict myself to a few words. There has been enough buzz around technology startups in the last 4-5 years. But until you get a ring-side view — as I did at CashPositive — it is hard to understand what’s special about them. For the benefit of readers, CashPositive is on a mission to make it easier for Indian businesses to run on credit.

Getting in

By the end of the first year of computer science and engineering at Thapar University, I was vaguely familiar with JavaScript. I used the summer before the third semester to sharpen my skills and started looking for opportunities to apply what I had learnt. One day, while browsing through AngelList, Internshala et al. I stumbled upon a young Delhi-based startup that was looking for JS developers. I decided to take a shot and submitted an online application. One coding assignment and two telephonic interviews later, I found myself in the company of a team that I have grown to love.

Summer 2018

While I started working remotely from my hostel room, I took two trips to Delhi for team ‘hackathons’ and finally, in the summer of 2018, shifted base from Patiala to work with teammates in the Delhi office for a six-week period. It was my first experience of living independently, away from home and hostel, made quite memorable by an eccentric landlord.

At 9.30AM each morning, my peers and I would volunteer to take up ‘issues’ or disaggregated work items and go full steam till lunch. Unless something critical was going on, lunch was time for wide-ranging banter — we sat around a table to break bread and talk sports, films, music, politics and everything in between. The time after lunch was generally for code reviews, testing, optimisation and meticulous documentation.

All told, this six-week period was the fastest I have seen time fly.

What I brought back

CashPositive proved to be a skills foundry. The learning outcomes spanned technology skills, software development best practices and effective communication. On any given day, I was both learning new concepts and implementing them. I got hands-on experience with React Native — a JavaScript framework that we used to develop a mobile product from scratch. My mentor Nitish, an old SAP hand and one of the co-founders, helped me understand how feedback and user empathy are critical to building responsive products. As our products were live with business customers, we had to ensure that we pushed out a robust code and used customer feedback to iterate quickly. It was just as important to communicate clearly and effectively as part of our team was distributed.

Hackathons were an interesting part of the experience. On two occasions, we blocked the weekend to work on something aspirational, something that would eventually find its place on the product roadmap. I worked on a digital signature or e-sign utility during the first hackathon and designed components for a mobile application during the second.

At CashPositive, we were encouraged to ask questions, often about broader things than what we were working on. Numerous conversations with co-founders Aniruddha and Dhruv led me to a more nuanced understanding of the market opportunities ahead of us.

Undoubtedly, I brought back a bag full of good memories.

What I left behind

Lots and lots of code!

As builders, we thought of our work as lining bricks on top of each other. Some of the bricks that I helped set included a new, more scalable database design, early workflows of the mobile product and tons of documentation that will hopefully make it easier for others to pick up from where I left off.

I understood the power of ‘accountable autonomy’ and drew immense satisfaction from building products that hit the market.

The Aftermath

With the internship over, it was time to head back to college. I was eager to share my experience with friends. I keep in touch with my mentor and the team and to this day, contribute to development efforts when I can. My biggest learning — more than the product, it’s about the process!