Thols — ‘Invest in yourself’

Though I had written a post already on how I joined Hypto, I would like to re-introduce myself and share my journey of getting here.

I come from a family of state government officers and employees. My dad, Velavan is a Production Officer, Department of Agriculture who’s parents were public school teachers. My mom, Kala is an Executive Engineer, PWD who’s father was JE in EB department. But in the current generation, me and my twin brother Thondamon (Design Engineer at WSP Consultants India) chose to try our hands in the private sector, so did my wife Prathiba (Associate Data Scientist at Shell).

The path to becoming a software engineer was very clear for me. I consider myself very lucky in this aspect of identifying and getting the opportunity to do what you love as your profession. I first started learning computer programming in my school as part of the curriculum. In our school, TCS had organised an event called “Insights”. At the end of the two week event we were tasked with building a software from a given requirement set. I led a team of three in this event to win the “Best Technical Team” award, which was my first validation. This led me to choose Computer Science and Engineering for my under graduation. There my interest grew further and I took part in various coding contests and organised a few as well. I got the clarity to select a product company over a service company for my career.

Luck struck again and got an offer from Freshdesk (now Freshworks), which is one of the best things that ever happened to me. In my tenure there, I was part of a couple of products where we built stuff from ground zero. I had the privilege of working with some of the best folks in the industry and learnt a lot from them. My thought process and perception evolved significantly, mainly due to my mentors.

• Shihab Muhammed (Founder& CEO at SurveySparrow) — Right out of college I joined his team to build Freshservice. I learnt an extraordinary work ethic from him. Huge thanks to him for guiding and being patient with the young me (who made a fair share of mistakes).
• Tarkeshwar Thakur (CTO & Co-Founder @ Drivetrain) — He picked me to build Freshsales. I am always in awe of his ability to make others take ownership. Thinking big and risk appetite are two of the many traits that I got from him.

Coming to the title of the post, “Invest in yourself”. This is a quote from Warren Buffet, where he advises others to spend time on improving their skillset. This quote was shared by a friend in a conversation about financial investments 🤦‍♂️. But this led to my own interpretation of it and started thinking of how I can maximise the outcomes for my efforts. This led me to do self introspection along various aspects of life. While this was going on, I got a connection request from Aravind on LinkedIn. At first, I wanted to have a casual conversation with him. Well, you know what happened after a few such conversations.

In retrospect, I had always invested in myself and my passion which paved the way for my next endeavor. Happy to hear stories of you following your passion. Do write to us at bestdaysofyourlife@hypto.in.