I don't have a dramatic childhood story about how I "always knew" I wanted to be an engineer.
If anything, what I remember most is curiosity. Not toward outcomes, but toward mechanisms. I was drawn to how things worked behind the scenes.
Engineering wasn't my first aspiration. At one point, I wanted to be a pilot. I don't know where that came from. I didn't know any pilots, I didn't know the path, and I didn't really ask anyone. It was just an attraction toward systems that moved through invisible rules. Lift, navigation, control.
Later, I considered medicine. But medicine requires mastery of retained knowledge. Decisions often must be made from memory rather than exploration. I've always been more comfortable figuring things out dynamically than recalling fixed information under pressure.
So engineering became less of a choice and more of a convergence point.
Education
My college had a flexible curriculum. Not the traditional rigid Indian engineering structure. I studied algorithms to silicon and chip making, economics, Human-Computer Interaction. But the real education came from doing.
The open-source culture around me pushed me into building early. During college, I worked across multiple startups. Building customer dashboards, researching Corporate Social Responsibility funding models in India, designing education funding outreach approaches, building applications across domains.
This period shifted something fundamental. I moved from wanting to understand systems to wanting to build systems where the effect was immediate and tangible. Startups showed me that directly — you build something, and something changes.
First Venture
By my 7th semester, I co-founded HuddleUp Tech with a few seniors. The goal was to bring hyperlocal businesses online. Grocery stores, clinics, restaurants, local service providers.
To drive adoption, we created a hyperlocal event-layer. If someone attended a large event or festival, our app mapped stalls, sub-events, bookings, ordering points. Users could discover, book, order, collect. It was a distribution-first approach disguised as utility.
After nine months, I stepped away. Not because the idea failed, but because I hadn't yet seen how real companies operate. I lacked ecosystem exposure. Financial pressure was real. I chose stability over continuation at that stage.
Sensory Preferences
My taste in music is less genre-driven, more emotion-driven. I resonate with Eminem, Linkin Park, Elvis Presley. Not for their sound alone, but for something harder to name. Vulnerability expressed through strength. Fragility disguised as force. There's often a quiet sadness behind their intensity. That contrast stays with me.
Piano evokes something oceanic. Calm but vast. I prefer environments with low noise, flowing sound, subtle continuity. Silence with texture.