Employee Spotlight: Kshiti Vyas
In conversation with one of our Associate Product Managers
Millennials are breaking the hard-set mentality that one must follow a career path in the same field as their educational background. Today, we come across more people than ever who have broken this barrier and chosen to follow their passions and turn them into fulfilling careers. In this edition of our employee spotlights, we meet Kshiti Vyas who too found her interest beyond the confines of her field of study.
Kshiti is from Indore, Madhya Pradesh and spent her growing years there, including her undergrad and post-graduation, and thanks to the flexibility of WFH, continues to work from Indore. She has an educational background in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing and Strategy from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore. She currently works as Associate Product Manager at Niyo.
Kshiti likes to pen down her thoughts and feelings by way of poems and articles. She’s an amateur painter too and shares that her writing skills surpass her painting skills! [chuckles] She enjoys dancing and has recently taken a keen interest in fitness.
“The best part I like here is the people at Niyo. So far, I haven’t met anyone in person but whoever I’ve connected with so far has been super helpful. I learn something new from everyone I connect with. I have the freedom to complete my work at my pace as long as I meet deadlines. I’m not bound in terms of work hours, instead, I own responsibility towards the project I’m working on. There’s a flat hierarchy at Niyo that makes it easy to approach the higher management.”
Q: What motivates you to wake up and go to work?
A: It really excites me that I always get to work on something new and interesting, so work doesn’t feel like an obligation any day. I like the work culture and people here. Any time I need any kind of help, it has always been easy to talk to everyone here — my managers and the team I’m working with, they always help out.
Q: What has been your career path before joining Niyo?
A: After completing my MBA, I was placed with a firm in a marketing and branding role. Due to the pandemic, they were delaying my joining date and weren’t open about when they’d call me. So, I started looking for more roles and other jobs and I came across Product Management. I felt that it would be interesting since I’ll get to research different problems people come across and create something new with those insights to help solve them. That got me interested in product management and I started applying for jobs in this field. After some time, I came across an opportunity with Niyo. Product management had anyway caught my interest by then and I felt it’d be a great experience working in a growing sector such as fintech. At that point, I had a limited idea about what I was getting into, but I wanted to explore it further. By the time Niyo confirmed, I had a few more interviews and offers in hand, but Niyo felt like the right choice and I joined Niyo as Associate Product Manager in December 2020.
Q: How did you get your job at Niyo?
A: I came across this job listing on an app called IIT/IIM Jobs. However, the company name was not posted there, it just mentioned that a fintech firm is looking to hire a product manager and I applied. Later, when they reached out to me, I found out it was from Niyo. I had heard about Niyo before because many students in my college going on international student exchange programs had taken the Niyo Global card. Before my interview, I read about the company and its various products to get a better picture of it.
Q: What entails your typical workday?
A: My day starts with checking data of different dashboards for the product features I’m working on to catch sight of any problem that might need to be fixed. I check emails for any pending issues. I mostly work as an individual contributor and the rest of my day involves analyzing data and attending meetings to collaborate with the different teams — Marketing, Design, and Tech.
Q: Are things different now that we’re all WFH?
A: I joined Niyo during the pandemic where WFH is the new normal. If I had been working from the office, I would have gotten to know a lot more people a little bit better. It’d have been comparatively a little easier to communicate and understand things. It takes a bit of an effort now to schedule meetings, you could otherwise just walk up to somebody’s desk and talk to them and resolve issues quickly.
I would have certainly made more friends. I’m an extrovert and talk a lot. But in this WFH scenario, while connecting with people virtually, I really miss the part where I can see a person and understand what they are talking about by their body language and expressions. It must be just me, I’m not very comfortable talking to someone new virtually without seeing their face and just listening to their voice.
However, I found a small circle of colleagues through working on the Wonder Women Conference and joining the monthly Niyo Book Club. It has been a great experience connecting with like-minded folks through these initiatives at Niyo.
Q: What has been your favourite project so far at Niyo? Why?
A: It was quite interesting to work on the NiyoX rewards engine. So far, this has been the only big project that I was totally involved in. Handling it throughout, right from the rewards construct to analyzing how different users react to different rewards and tweaking them to achieve the target results, and the marketing aspects of it was exciting. When I joined, the tech aspects of the rewards engine were quite new to me. I wasn’t very proficient with SQL and didn’t know that I’d need that level of tech expertise, but while working on this project I learnt to gather data from SQL and get insights from it as well.
In a nutshell, I worked on all aspects of this feature — tech, data, and marketing and it was truly enriching. It’s satisfying to see that something that I’ve worked on is shown on the app and it’s yielding the expected results.
Q: What do you like about working at Niyo?
A: The best part I like here is the people at Niyo. So far, I haven’t met anyone in person but whoever I’ve connected with so far has been super helpful and nice to me. I learn something new from everyone I connect with. I’m not bound in terms of work hours, instead, I own responsibility towards the project I’m working on. I have the freedom to complete my work at my pace as long as I meet deadlines. There’s a flat hierarchy at Niyo that makes it easy to approach the higher management.
Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
A: Something my father said to me a long time ago has stuck with me till now — Always dream big. You can’t achieve big when you dream small. Let your aspirations fly high.
Q: What advice would you give someone who wants to join Team Niyo?
A: Always know your strengths and shortcomings. There’s always an opportunity waiting for you to learn something new. As long as you’re willing to learn, you’ll be fine.
Q: What is the most inspiring part of your job?
A: I’m surrounded by intelligent people and I get to learn something new through my interactions with them almost every day.
Q: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A: Growing up, my mother has influenced my thoughts to a large extent and she’s been my go-to person every time I need something. My mom brought me up with the idea that I have to grow up to become an IAS personnel. At the age of 6 or 7, I had no clue what it meant but whenever someone asked, I’d say I want to become an IAS.
Q: What’s something most people don’t know about you?
A: I love to write and some of my poems are published in magazines. During my college days, I was a regular member of various magazines on campus.
Q: How do you unwind from work?
A: Netflix has become my best buddy all through the pandemic. I must have watched at least 50 series! I like watching happy and fun stuff like Modern Family. I used to be an avid reader when I was young, somehow along the way I lost the habit, I’m trying to catch up with non-fiction these days. Recently, I read a few books about product management — Hooked, Hacking growth, and Rich dad poor dad.
Would you like to work with Kshiti on your next project? Do check out Niyo Careers for any open positions in your field of expertise. To get a sneak peek at Niyo’s culture and the cool people who turn ideas into reality, check out Niyo behind the scenes.
