I am an Electronics Engineer from Pune university who is pursuing a PGDM at NMIMS Bangalore. This summer I had the opportunity to intern with IoTIoT.in. The best part about working with brilliant driven people is that the zeal becomes contagious and makes one strive to outdo oneself. This story begins at the Oxford of the East, Pune. Innovation Lab no 3 of the Incubation centre called BHAU Institute in the campus of College of Engineering Pune to be more specific. The first thing that one may notice upon entering the said lab is not the awards that remain almost hidden out of sight but a strange Robotic ARM that cozily rests on the front table as though eager for some task that it was designed to perform. And perform optical detection of products for segregation using AI enabled computer vision so well that Siemens recognized its creator a final year engineering student from COEP and an Intern at IoTIoT for his efforts. The first question I asked Nikhil Sir the founder of IoTIoT.in was that why does the IoT appear twice in the name, his answer made me realize that I will be working with just the right kind of people, he replied “It looks like a person wearing glasses who is looking at you so we don’t need a separate logo/Mascot.”
The 4-member strong team of IoTIoT.in knew that they are creating technology that can only be compared with the kind of work happening in Shenzhen, China or Silicon Valley, USA. I soon found out they were not wrong in believing so. Using open source platforms this team through an array of Hackathons among students had created an AI Enabled Operating system meant for IoT devices. There were more than 26 modules of AI that had been imported in the library of Shunya OS. Upon knowing the vision to create Globally leading start-ups from Indian Ecosystem I was affirmed that the Impact this may have on the businesses of the future will be unprecedented and I must do everything under the sun to do my part to make this ambition a reality. But as it happens in many stories this story also has its antagonists the first one being the OS itself was undergoing the final testing stages to finalize a beta version for release and further tests. So I will not get to sell the first indigenous OS for IoT devices in our country yet? No, I was told you need to conduct a market research to determine the how we can sell AI labs to engineering colleges in Pune and Mumbai, So we can monetize our development process for the Operating system. Apart from looking for Investors who could bring value and access to the Indian market, Nikhil sir also wanted to utilize the government skilling programs being a recognized SME in the field of kernel programming with Electronics Skill development council. So First I ran a WebCrawler on the website of DTE to procure decision maker contacts from the required geography i.e Mumbai and Pune, Floated 10,000 Survey forms with these contacts to conduct primary research finishing with 50 responses. I also got the chance to meet and understand the perspective of skill gap if any among Indian engineers and the requirements of the industry. Collated secondary data on government skilling programs and how we could align our offering with them, studied NAAC rating requirements to bundle tangible benefits along with the labs that would make the product more attractive to the target audience. Apart from that some marketing content for recruiting more interns for subsequent work and training on email campaign practices was given by me to the other interns for future purpose. I concluded my work by shortlisting 20 out 64 applicants for the same role to continue the work. Working with a small flexible team next to the boat club and sharing meals left me with memories that shall forever inspire me to contribute through discipline and excellence.