It was the May-June of 2022, A professor at my university had put a hiring call in our whatsapp group. The call was from a startup in Trichy, they were looking for a Mechatronics Engineer with experience in Computer Vision and Deep Learning. As all my classmates did, I did apply to the role, it was a form asking about previous experience and CV. At this point of time, I already had an offer from TCS, and was having plans for applying for higher studies. But was definitely unsure of the path to take, and hence applied for the role aswell.
The Interview Call
After few days, I got a call for interview from the startup (somewhere in July). That was the first time, I had Ravishankar, the founder of AugurAi. There were multiple rounds of interview, starting from him followed with interactions with the Engineers at the firm. Through the interview process, I understood that they were looking for someone with approximately my profile. I still remember stumbling on some questions confidently. But, it was Ravishankar who gave me another chance with an additional round of interview. Finally, I was selected for the role as a full time Data Scientist, and he asked me a joining date to start from. By this time, I was still in the UK, and I said I could join from August.
Joining the Company
Few days later, I came back to home, and after within 2 weeks, I started to Trichy from Chennai. It was 3rd of August, I came to the office in the Trichy, and met the team, everyone was so energetic and the company was so young overall. I was provided with 1 week of complementary accomodation at the starting. I was able to find a hostel nearby, and I started my job.
Me and Trichy Mosquitos
Soon after I moved to Trichy, Within one month, I was severely sick and was diagonized with Dengue. I definitely underestimated the mosquitos at the hostel. Though I was able to work, I was not able to work continously, felt tired, and had to request for sick leave. I went back Chennai for almost 2-3 weeks, and was hospitalized for approximately the whole time. Finally, I recovered and went back to Trichy.
The Exciting Part
The Work. the work itself was the exciting part. I was interested in deep learning and had done some university projects on it, but never got to apply those things on real-life, as I was focusing on robotics and application of deep learning on them. The company was highly involved in addressing optical inspection problems, and I was working on research and training newer models, data collection protocols, and customer demos. Apart from this, I was also building a miniature-robot for one of our use-cases. This was complete, I was traveling different places for work, meeting new people, working on cutting edge, had a nice bicycle to work, good food, good weather, friends (officially Collegues 😁). I know trichy is pretty hot in general, but somehow I liked it.
The Change in Direction
I was already having discussions with Prof. Marc Hanhiede, Head of L-CAS for any opportunity for MSc at Lincoln. After few calls with him and several calls with the admin team, about the time of January 2023, I got an unconditional offer to pursue a fully funded MSc at University of Lincoln. I had to inform Ravishankar on this, and immediately he encouraged me to take the opportunity, and to pursue it. He was definitely someone, who had an influence on my path. He himself is a PhD holder, and after several years in industry he started his startup in India. After about a month, at end of Feb, I officially resigned my job at AugurAi.
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