The 'Winter of Doing' tech externship lets you solve real-world problems with India's top startups

Over the last few decades, Indian technology industry has evolved from being a back-office of the world to an emerging technology powerhouse. Today we're witnessing a boom of companies who are building world-class products to address various problems in the country as well as solving challenging global problems. While the opportunity landscape is evolving rapidly, availability of qualified tech talent has not kept pace and is emerging as a key challenge for our industry.

Millions of young tech professionals in India are underemployed from the perspective of value creation and earning potential. Although India has a multifold of opportunities, which students and young professionals can take advantage of, it is often beyond their reach. The prime reason is they lack the skills required or don’t have exposure to industry-relevant practical learning. Often, companies expect them to have practical experience, which most of the curriculum and certification courses do not provide. Crio.do, a Bangalore-based experiential learning platform is trying to address this gap.

To create credible work-like apprenticeships at a large scale, Crio.Do recently announced its industry-first, community externship program: 'Winter of Doing 2020’ in partnership with leading startups, AWS, HackerRank and YourStory. The programme brings leading tech companies and startups in the Indian ecosystem together, with the aim of inculcating product development skills in the participants.

YourStory spoke to Rathinamurthy R, Co-Founder, Crio.Do about the need for such a programme and the benefits it offers. According to him, Crio.Do is on a mission to empower developers with high-quality applied learning opportunities at scale, and nurture talent for the future. Winter of Doing provides experiential learning opportunities, similar to internships, but shorter in duration, part-time, in partnership with leading startups.

"If you talk to any successful engineer in the industry and ask where they learnt the best, most often it’s through projects during work or internships. Learning by doing and solving real problems have proven to be very effective to learn technology skills and competencies," said Rathinamurthy. “Our goal is to provide meaningful and credible work-like learning experiences outside of work. Thanks to all the participating startups for their generous contributions in creating this opportunity for young developers. We really want to make this event as a launchpad for many aspiring product developers in India," he added.

A tech externship for software developers

The programme provides externships for 100+ selected developers in partnership with companies like CRED, Groww, Jumbotail, Recko, Slice and Vicara and more. Professional developers and students in the final year of engineering can apply.

"Through the programme, we aim to empower Indian developers and democratise high-quality practical tech learning with help of Crio.Do’s unique experiential learning platform and mentorship from the tech community," he said. Participants will get to work on exciting projects like credit card management systems, GPS-based asset tracking portal, contextual chatbot for investors, and doc library with Digilocker integration among others.

Benefits of the programme

Apart from getting an opportunity to work directly with top startups on challenging tech projects, participants will also get to interact with the biggest names in India's tech industry, take part in engaging masterclasses by India's top engineers, get access to hands-on learning modules, get discovered by Crio.Do's hiring partners, and more. Binny Bansal, Co-Founder, xto10x and Co-Founder, Flipkart and Vivek Ravisankar, Co-Founder, HackerRank will be interacting with the participants and sharing valuable insights during the programme.

"Crio.Do facilitates the entire project lifecycle and mentorships through its experiential learning platform. This presents a great opportunity for developers to work on real-world projects given by leading startups, learn and demonstrate their skills," said Rathinamurthy.

Participate and advance your dev career

The programme starts on January 9, 2021, and is split into three stages - Warm-up (1 week), Preparation (2 weeks), and Externships (6 weeks). Each week, participants will have to allot 10 hours of their time, and based on their performance in the application and mini programming challenges, they will qualify for the next stage. Post selection, applicants go through a three-month-long part-time remote project which they can take up while in college or working.

"The Winter of Doing programme is completely online and free, applicants only need to invest their time and effort. Developers who successfully complete the projects will be recognised with verified work experience which they can leverage to improve their career prospects," said Rathinamurthy.

Raj, an applicant for the programme said, “This opportunity is like a dream come true for many developers like me. I work in production support in my current company and have always wondered about what it takes to build a product end-to-end, but never had an opportunity. Thanks to Crio.Do and all its community partners for providing a platform like this. I hope to leverage it to the fullest extent possible and really improve my practical exposure and skills."

To join the Winter of Doing externship, fill in this application.

The last date to apply is January 4, 2021.