Mumbai: Vamil Sangoi (24), an engineer from D.J. Sanghvi
College of Engineering, Mumbai, knows how difficult it is for students taking
professional courses to land good internships.
In 2012, Mr. Sangoi, then
19, couldn’t find an internship for over a year. Most of his friends faced the
same issue. This got him thinking about starting a portal as one-stop solution
for all internship-related issues.
He soon teamed up with
three of his friends from his institute, Dhruvi Dharia, Anshini Jhaveri and
Jugal Choksi, and in 2014, started www.internup.in. Within four months, nearly
1,500 students from various streams and 300 companies in Mumbai registered on
the website. “Students found the website helpful,” says Mr. Sangoi. This
prompted them to make it more exhaustive and to enrol students from other
cities.
In 2015, the four friends
completed their engineering course, but instead of looking for a job, decided
to hunt for investors for their venture. “While all our classmates where
appearing for campus placements, we were preparing for seed funding,” says Ms.
Dharia. They closed their first investor pitch in 2015 and got Rs. 72 lakh
against equity. Full-fledged operations took off in June 2015. The four later
revamped the website and launched www.interntheory.com in the beginning of
2016.
The portal has more than
2.5 lakh students from around 55 cities in the country offering to be interns
in more than 40 professional fields. Over 7,000 companies post on the site. “We
cater to all the recruitment needs of companies, screening talented interns
across several fields, making the entire process as hassle-free as possible for
students and companies,” says Mr. Choksi. So far, more than 50,000 students
have been shortlisted for internships across the country.
There have been challenges
throughout, says Mr. Sangoi. “India is still far from being internship-friendly
as most students do not feel the need to do an internship. They do it only
because it is mandatory in a few colleges or courses. A majority of courses
across the country don’t accommodate internships.”
Further, many companies
were not able to accept the ideology of internships, which is to structure
internship programmes in such a way so as to use the students as a long-term
employee pool. Interns bring in fresh ideas but most companies either don’t
hire them or don’t value and nurture them. Most of them just want to hire
people with experience, and don’t wish to pay interns. “Apart from that, we
found that many students lacked the motivation to intern somewhere,” says Mr.
Sangoi. To make students understand the importance of internships, they
conducted workshops in various colleges. “We also made it a point to maintain
good relationships with placement cells of as many colleges as possible,” says
Mr. Choksi.
For the convenience of
students, the process has been made hassle-free. All they have to do is
register on the website, free of cost, where they can mention their
preferences, hobbies and qualifications. “This makes it easier for companies
that register on the portal and post internships,” says Ms. Jhaveri. The
companies later review applications from students interested in interning with
them.
Online courses
Gradually, they realised
that there was a gap between companies’ needs and educational courses. “Digital
marketing is becoming huge but students don’t know enough about it. Keeping
that in mind we launched online courses six months ago,” says Ms. Dharia.
The startup runs three
courses and plans to launch two more by the year-end. They have a panel of
experts who provide content, monitor progress and help students with any
difficulty.
In addition, interntheory
helps companies run innovative campaigns directed at the youth. Further, as the
startup has a pool of experienced students, it provides companies with fresh graduates
who have work experience.
“We have been running
offline but by the end of 2017, plan to launch an innovative online hiring
solution which will reduce hiring costs by up to four times,” says Mr. Sangoi.
This can be achieved by allowing companies to post vacancies for free, only
charging a nominal fee for shortlisting candidates.
Stuti Shah (20), who is
pursuing her second year BMS from Lala Lajpatrai College, Worli found
interntheory useful while searching for an internship. Immediately after uploading
her CV she got an opportunity to intern with CNN for two months. She plans to
take more internship programmes through this portal.
P.B. Lalranchinna, Human
Capital Developer, Leadership Development, Viacom 18 finds the portal efficient
and effective in fulfilling the company’s recruitment needs. The company has
been hiring interns through interntheory for over a year.
The goal is to facilitate
internships to over a million students in the next three years and provide a
high level of industry-based
training to students
before they apply for internships. Says Mr. Sangoi, “We aim to make the hiring
process quick and seamless.”
Source: THE HINDU-12th October,2017
