Learnings from my first year at Josh Talks

Josh Talks has always been about ‘unlocking human potential’ and today after having spent a year at the organisation, wearing multiple hats, I feel I am in a good position to share why.

Why did I choose Josh Talks?

When I first interviewed here, I was also interviewing with multiple other organisations but why I chose Josh over them is because of one reason — it was and always has been about the challenges that I get to work on and the vision of the team that I represent. I was already an avid viewer of Josh Talks’ videos on YouTube and when I found out about their product, Josh Skills, and learned about the impact it was having on people, I instantly felt something in me tick.

In the last one year, I’ve witnessed some remarkable things that have helped shape my impression of the organisation. The vision that Josh Talks has for the Indian internet users in tier 2+ cities is truly unparalleled and this reflects in everyone working alongside you. In fact, it was what made me sign up in the first place and till today, I continue to experience this feeling.

Each person owns the impact of their idea.

Josh Talks has a rather rare culture that forces you to think, ideate and critique even if you don’t like doing any of it. Add to this is the freedom to share your idea with anyone in the organisation and the complete autonomy in executing it in whatever way you would like. This part of the culture isn’t just limited to improving what we already do but also extends to treading into uncharted territories — the people here will support you with tools and processes which help you iterate, build, experiment and learn faster.

I had a chance to plan and lead a pilot project called ‘Josh Chalaang’ that focused on empowering students from not so empowered backgrounds to get jobs in the tech industry. Even though we couldn’t really find our way around the model on how to make it work, I will always be proud of how it brought me closer to my craft and my team.

Empowering tens of millions — with Josh and Skills!

I have been now focusing on designing and building the Android side of the features for our Josh Skills app, which as I sit and write has been downloaded over 3 million times and 200,000+ users have already purchased courses from.

Our users come from Tier 2, 3, 4 cities in the country and have just started getting online — most of the companies don’t even take this user base into consideration, let alone build for them. The scale of technical challenges while solving for such a user base is massive, as some of them are still using Android 5 (which was launched in 2014 and has very unstable internet connectivity) and so far our app has been downloaded on 4500+ distinct devices.

In the last one year, I have designed and built an entirely new feature called Groups which helped our users connect with other users sharing similar interests. Most recently, I have been a part of the team that redesigned our most loved Practice Partner Calling feature from scratch that brought down the connection time from 8 seconds to 2 seconds and significantly improved the time that our users spent using this feature. I initially solved the Bluetooth connectivity for the massive range of devices as specified above.

A home away from home.

In any professional setup, you are bound to have days when you might feel dull but the team at Josh Talks will always be there to support you through it, always full of energy so much so that it makes every second spent at the office feel worthwhile.

12 months may not be a long time but from ‘Josh Chalaang’ to focusing all my time to build for our 200,000+ paying users, I have found my home away from home — full of people who are out to make a difference but are also full of empathy to never let you feel alone. Here, I’d like to specifically mention Harsh Gupta and Shobhit Banga who consistently go out of their way to help out teammates not just professionally but in their personal lives as well.

Witnessing the progress on how an organisation can have such a solid impact on individuals really amazes me and makes me proud to be a part of Josh every single day. My one year journey at Josh Talks is the biggest testament to the fact that Josh Talks isn’t just unlocking the potential of its users but also of its employees.