From Agricultural Sciences to becoming a Developer with ISA
Shreedhar Bhat’s parents come from a farming background. Hailing from Uttarakannada, a region in Karnataka, the family has been traditionally into agriculture all their lives. For a longer period of time, Shreedhar wanted to pursue his education in agriculture as well. He moved to Dharward to do his Bachelor’s from Karnataka University.
Shreedhar says he was never a bright kid in school but only wanted to follow in his familial footsteps. Also owing to his family’s financial situation, he could only take up B.Sc in Agricultural Sciences, with a very vague idea of what to do after graduation and that time there is no such concept of ISA. .
But what really changed was his influence from friends in college, who were pursuing Computer Science. Shreedhar found himself writing code on his friends’ laptops every now and then. One of his roommates in the college hostel was an Android Developer, and Shreedhar wanted to do the same as well. He would watch tutorials and videos on YouTube, about Java and building mobile applications.
“After graduating from college, I tried to pursue a Master’s in Computer Applications (MCA) but my family could not afford it. I already had the interest to pursue a career in Computers but was left clueless. After many job trials and competitive examinations, I realized I needed more skills and experience.”
An article in India Today introduced Shreedhar to Masai School. A year and a half later, he is now a software engineer at Bengaluru-based payments startup Instamojo.
The Pay After Placement System
To reduce the burden of student loans for engineering students, Masai School operates on an Pay After Placement(PAP) where the students pay zero upfront cost. Once they graduate from the course, the students will pay back 15 percent of their monthly income for 36 months, or until they reach a maximum capped amount of INR 3 lac.
However, the PAP model is applicable only when the students get a job offer with a package of INR 5 LPA or more.
Shreedhar says there were many institutes out there that would fraud students with incompetent online courses and Masai also seemed like one at the first glance. But the entire ISA system was what got his attention hooked, and developed faith that this might be a good opportunity for him.
Coding at Masai School
To pursue his Masai course, he would end up traveling more than 2 hours every day for 30 kilometers, to find a place that has a decent internet connection. His home in Uttarakannada did not even have access to a decent mobile network. What really kept him going and motivated was his commitment to becoming a serious web developer.
HTML, CSS, Javascript, Data Structures and Algorithms, and MERN Stack were among the technical skills he developed during his Full-Stack Web Development course at Masai School. The 9-9-6 training was initially a hardship that eventually became a habit for Shreedhar and his peers, he recalls.
“I am a very tense person in nature, and I have to attribute that the staff at Masai School helped me a lot through the course. I was not very strong in the basics of Javascript, Data Structures, and Algorithms. Aman and Albert at Masai helped me with many mock interviews.”
While the Placements team helped Shreedhar with his communication skills and interview skills, he was quickly able to grab two job offers from Nickelfox technologies and Instamojo. While excited by both the offers, he was inspired by the work being done at Instamojo & took up the internship offer.
Typically, Instamojo waits for a period of 6 months before it converts an intern into a full-time software developer. During his first month here, he started working on React.JS and built some projects around it. He says the feedback for his reporting manager was so good that the tech company was happy enough to convert the internship into a full-time role in only three months.
“If someone wants to enter the world of software development and coding, Masai is undoubtedly the right place. The goal is to focus and spend a lot of time on coming up with solutions rather than worry about the problems,” Shreedhar tells aspiring developers.