0 to 0.1 : The Journey!

Hello LinkedIn,

This is going to be my first ever post/article, the reason being that I always thought I hadn't achieved anything significant yet that I could share or brag about. Well, with the start of this new year and new phase of my journey I decided to make every other deed noticeable. So here is how my journey has been so far:

Enrolled as a computer science student at Manipal University Jaipur , I spent my first year making friends, working in fest, fighting elections, and yes.. exploring technologies.

In late 2019, getting inspired by my friend? Ayush Agrawal , I started practicing app development via Flutter and became an early adopter of the technology.

Soon when there was a lockdown in my 2nd year (in early 2020), I decided to make the most of it, and seeing the situation in my hometown, decided to launch my very first app and founded?Daily Bag. With aiming to serve the community by providing essentials at the doorstep during the lockdown, Daily Bag got recognised and supported by the local government and even got featured in local newspapers. While everyone was in their home fighting for their safety, I was out trying to connect vendors for supply and was in line to get the required permissions from the government to execute this startup.

We successfully managed to serve more than 200 orders with a team of around 10 members and gave business to 5(+) local vendors. I would like to thank my uncle Dilip Modi, brother Agraj Tayal and my friends Naman Maheshwari , Anukul Vijayvergiya and Dikshant agrawal who helped making Daily Bag, a vague idea turn into reality.?

With the help of this venture, I also got noticed by some startups and managed to get a couple of internships in 2020/21. I also was the lead application developer at Piblu and managed a team of 4. By the end of my 3rd year at college, I founded a startup, completed 3 internships, grabbed a couple of freelance projects, and published more than 5 applications.?

At the start of my 4th year, I caught myself in a dilemma that I think is common with some students at the time: Higher studies (MS) or Job. While I was struggling to make a choice, I got presented with an opportunity and luckily got selected for a semester-long Industrial Training Program at? 美国佛罗里达大学 ?which allowed me to explore the first choice during my 8th semester of BTech.?

I flew to Florida(US) in Dec 2021. It was a wonderful experience as I got to explore the other part of the world and even learn a lot about Software Engineering practices, UX Design process, and Algorithms.

Thanks to Harsh Athavale , Nishant Agrawal and Raghav Gupta for making the entire sem fun and bearable. Also thanks to this opportunity which gave me the experience and time to make up my mind to stay in India and drop the idea of master’s for a while. The reason behind this was not that I didn’t like the culture there or got homesick but majorly it made me realise that I don’t want to stay there for a longer period doing a fancy job as it may get me distracted from my end goal which is to build a startup which can help the community.

The sem ended and I returned to India in May 2022. With the intentions clear back then, I started looking for a job and grabbed a couple of offers by June’22. I decided to join and work for a startup (a good one) but shortly after I joined the company, had to resign due to some reasons.?

I took it on a positive note and when I got back on track, I decided to stay firm on my path which can lead me to my end goal so I continued with freelancing intending to target multiple offline sectors and help them go online. I also started managing a team of BDA interns to manage and expand the business. A special thanks to? Monali Barange and? Abhinav M. ?for helping me expand the business and manage a team of around 12 interns.

This taught me many things, most importantly the value of patience. Choosing a not so chosen path brings a lot of unseen challenges throughout the ride. The real key to overcoming them becomes patience, hard work, and faith in yourself. While I see this as the most difficult phase till now, I also consider myself lucky to have grabbed early projects which made the later ride a bit easier to follow.

Phew! Coming to the final change of path: Just a few months back, I got presented with another opportunity when I got in contact with Sparsh Agrawal and Mohammed Zeeshan in Nov 2022. In a week long discussion and multiple 2-3 hours video meet-ups, I got to know about them and their mission to help teenagers follow a right career path by building LinkedIn for teenagers at Nova!

Finally after the discussions, I got the opportunity to join the Founding Team. Having a chat for advice from some mentors, I decided to take on the opportunity and put hold on the freelance business. So it now brings us to the place where I landed: Building Nova. Kuddos to the entire team and specially Sparsh and Zeeshan for attracting the attention and investments from star angels.?Really enjoying building the product from scratch with Khushal Singh Rao . The level of dedication we all are showing here is insane. There isn't a single weekend that we have taken off so far. Touchwood! Feeling excited to be on a path to build the next Unicorn with these amazing and talented guys.

The entire journey so far has been a lot with ups and downs and with a lot of confusion about career path, jobs, and startups. I don’t know what the future holds but am satisfied from my journey. I am a part of something that I wanted and in some way on a path to revolutionise and help the teenagers community.

I won’t lie or feel embarrassed that I have changed so many decisions and been on a roller coaster ride till now as it all seemed possible because of my parents, Rajneesh Tayal and Sandhya Tayal, my brother and friends who were always there to support my each and every decision and believed in me throughout. I would like to mention my other family and my everyday support system for this reason: Monali Barange , Naman Maheshwari , Nivedi Singhal , Anukul Vijayvergiya and Geetansh Agrawal .

I know I haven't achieved much yet and success is way too far but if anything, I would like to give you all an advice from my experience till now:

Don't hesitate to switch jobs, careers, or even colleges. It's the change that will eventually help you in achieving what you dreamt of! The only constant in your life should be hard work. So leave your comfort zone, take risks, and enjoy the struggling process of chasing your dreams.

While trying to sleep one night, I finally felt that I have raised from 0 to 0.1 and hence the title. Now from 0.1 to 0.2 and eventually 1 (if possible someday), I don't know how many new challenges I'll have to face but with the faith in myself, I'll always be ready for each one of them.