Application Procedure:
My summer internship was at Super Highway Labs Pvt Ltd (Shuttl) in the field of Data Analytics. I got this internship through TnP. The application process was similar to that of the 3rd year students. The first round was a CV shortlist and being in the second year, I didn’t really have a great CV, I had prepared a simple one showing my strengths and skills. One of the things I feel was important for this was that I had learned languages and tools essential for it. I had done some courses on Machine Learning online so I feel that might have been helpful in the CV shortlist round. The machine learning courses were really important because that was entirely what I was asked about in my technical interview of about an hour. I was majorly asked questions based on Neural Networks, bias-variance trade-offs, SVM and clustering algorithms. Other than that, I was asked some basic logical questions to test my analytical skills and a bit towards the business side and growth ideas for the company.
Why I applied?
I was a bit interested in learning tools for analysis of data because this is one of the things that is crucial for every field, whether research or any corporate sector like IT and consultancy. I wanted to explore more by not actually just learning but working in the field hence I went for this internship, which also helped me realise what my future goals might be.
The Internship:
I was selected for the operations and supply role in the Analytics Department. Being a start-up one of the things was that I had a flexible schedule. I used to report at around 10:30 a.m. and work till 7 p.m. Throughout my internship, I was working on various small projects and some major projects. The first two weeks were more of a training to get used to the environment. I was introduced to the team, my mentor and the basic skills I would have to learn and was given some small tasks to make me comfortable with it. I had to learn some libraries and coding practices that I used later for my major projects.
Shuttl is basically a corporate commute provider. So, one of my major projects was to improve the customer experience. This was basically divided into two parts – Firstly, I had to analyse and identify problems related to the customer experience, then I had to identify the target area of work and prepare a model to improve the deliverability and reliability. The second project that I worked on, was to optimize the number of metro feeder electric buses according to the slot timings, charging capacities, gaps and running kilometres so as to reduce the cost to the company.
Delving more into the internship experience, Shuttl provided me with a conducive environment for learning, improving my skills and actually experiencing the work that goes on in the corporate environment. The projects I was involved in were actually implemented in the company which gave me a sense of responsibility.
One of the things that I feel was really good about my internship was that my projects were not really specific and I could work on them according to my observations and research from the data.
There wasn’t even a single day I got bored with my work during my internship. I got really involved with the team, with my mentor as well as other members of the team. We used to sit for discussions, breaks, sometimes go out for lunch parties and had a lot of fun along with the work.
Corporate vs Research Internship?
One of the major challenges we have as second-yearites is the conflict whether to go for research or for the corporate experience. While most of the students aim for foreign interns and research projects, working in the corporate sector is also a really good experience and there’s a great learning curve that can be explored from the second year itself.
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