IC Feature of the Month: Nikita Agrawal
Nikita is a 2020 graduate from IIT Kharagpur, majoring in Agricultural and Food engineering. She is placed as a full-time Product Manager at IDFC First Bank.
During her undergrad, she has interned at multiple places, the last one being with Blume Ventures, an early-stage VC fund, a research internship at the University of Maine, USA; Singularium Technologies (Bengaluru), and at IIFL based out of Mumbai.
How did you discover your inclination towards startups/VC?
One thing that I have always been interested in is startups, as startups are trying to bring out the effective solutions in the industry and making the best possible use of technology and bringing the real innovation in this world.
Talking about what Venture Capitalists (VCs) do, they analyze new pitches, the startup teams’, manage the existing portfolios, in order to fund innovation for the future.
I always wanted to explore working in a startup and after interning at one(Singularium Technologies), I got inclined towards VCs, the backbone behind any startup. The interesting aspect about interning at a VC firm is the amount of exposure one gets by interacting with multiple startups and some super-smart folks in the industry.
As I was entering my final year, I decided to apply for an internship at a VC firm to thus get a better idea, working with different companies that were building awesome products.
How did you manage to get the internships (since they were all off-campus)?
Cold-emailing.
For my research internship, I had planned to intern abroad early in my third year; emailed some 300–400 professors, and received replies from about 20–25, out of which only 2–3 were ready for funding me. I chose one of them and interned at the University of Maine, working on the Sea Weed Dryer Project. It was a great experience!
For my first internship at IIFL, I had been referred by someone in my circles for the internship. I wasn’t very aware of the procedure back then but learned a lot about the payments and financial sectors. Later on, after exploring a few industries, I started realizing that I want to explore startups and VCs so I started reaching out to relevant folks through LinkedIn.
Since you’ve been in the US, what major differences have you observed in the Indian and the US ecosystem?
The key difference is that students in the USA stick to their majors, and spend all of their energy and time making a career out of it, which is not true in India. The USA has opportunities in all fields, and thus students make career choices very early on, as compared to the ecosystem in India.
For eg, in my major — if one has to build a career, the best way is to go for an MS/Ph.D. abroad, because there aren’t a good number of opportunities yet in India, so I might pursue a career in other domain, but in America, most of the students end up pursuing their career in the same domain as they have got multiple opportunities in almost every field.
And yes, people in the USA consider brown people very smart 😎
What was your work at Blume Ventures like?
I was one of the 4 interns at Blume during the summer of ’19. My focus area was healthcare, where I worked closely with the Investment team to build Healthtech Investment Thesis & pipeline tools. I organized meetups with experienced founders, for younger ones; evaluated pitches, worked around market research, sizing problems, and was involved in discovering the technical gaps in the health-tech space in India.
VCs look for proactive, smart, and creative folks who can identify the gaps and bring innovative solutions to the existing problems in the industry.
What made you take up a PM role, even after you worked at a VC firm?
Like I said, my interests revolved around startups, and thus technology. During my internship at Blume, since I interacted with multiple founders who were building quite innovative products, I found the process of implementing tech to solve a problem at a faster rate very interesting and was thus inclined towards a Product role. Cutting it short, I love solving problems and communicating with people, which drove me towards PM.
Also, very few VC firms hire graduates fresh out of college, which is quite justified as the role involves dealing with a portfolio of experienced teams and founders.
Which of these do you think is the bigger problem — lack of resources or lack of awareness amongst students?
The latter. We have several resources at our disposal, but there is a lack of awareness on behalf of the students. Especially when it’s easy to go with the flow, one needs to explore and find his/her niche.
I think we all realize it ourselves, after exploring different options over a few years. You will eventually figure out which field interests you (as I did).
Any resources that you feel could be helpful for students, preparing for a PM role?
For my internships, I didn’t prepare from any specific books or resources. However, for the product role, I prepared through the following books:
2) Preparing for product interviews- A Product- ive guide to Landing a product job(for product case prep, don’t just read this book, solve the cases with a partner; solving a few business cases are recommended before solving product cases for a better understanding; business case through the book: Case Interviews Cracked)
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