Param Shah – Franklin Templeton

“Ek last match?”, I used to say to my friend Tanay after losing the previous match to him on one of the TT tables in the Franklin Templeton office, everyday, and he would delightfully toss the ball the next second. After escaping the above mentioned infinite loop, our sweaty faces would head back to our respective desks, only to take a nap or to attempt a competitive programming contest. *rewind*

While hoping that I pass the Insight censor-check for internship blogs, let me sit back and take you all, the readers, through my internship experience.

I am Param Shah from Ahmedabad, currently a CSE thirdie here at IIT Bombay, who loves playing football and making music (kindly follow me on YouTube: Param Shah). There I was in CC303, making the final edits to my artificially sophisticated resume at 11:60 PM on the day of the submission deadline, like everyone else I believe; and I remember being upset about failing to timely submit my 1-page resume on the placement portal. The university interns started showing up and I (having not excellent CPI) started enjoying my friends’ summer-sorted treats and GPLs. I don’t know why, but I hadn’t succumbed to the stress/peer pressure of immediately securing an internship. Nonetheless, I was signing IAFs optimistically.

Franklin Templeton was perhaps the first company intern that opened up explicitly for sophies. If I recall correctly, it showed up in the later weeks of December’22; Tanay said “Achchi company hai, 50000 denge maheene ka, sign karle”, and I obeyed. A technical test was scheduled in the first week of January’23, in which we were supposed to complete several data-analysis tasks in Python, preferably using the Pandas library. I hadn’t prepared anything as such, and I don’t think the test needed any preparation anyway; the knowledge of basic Pandas’ functionalities would have sufficed.

The next round shortlist brought along a conflict among happiness, excitement and tension, for it was going to be my first ever professional interview. I sought advice from my seniors who had already interned at the company and found out that it was rather going to be a personal interview. So the night before it, I ran my eyes over my resume, urged the laundry-bhaiya to iron my favourite shirt, researched about the company and formulated a fine (or so I thought back then) question about it, addressed to the interviewers, that I apparently had to ask at the end of the interview.

For the first time in college, I was dressed formally from head-to-toe. I maintained a confident posture as I greeted my interviewers, but at the same time forecasted all sorts of nasty questions that they could annoy me with. It began with my introduction, followed by some interrogations on the tasks in the technical test. Next, they questioned me about the projects that I had mentioned on my resume.

“Would you like it in Hyderabad, staying for the summer?”, I was asked. “Sure sir, I’d love to visit the heritage places like Charminar and the Golconda fort”, said I in my most innocent voice in order to flatter them, but barely pronouncing the latter place correctly. “Eh, most people come to eat our Biryani”, was the response to which I said, “I can’t since I eat Jain food”. They assured me, “Don’t worry, we’re vegetarians as well; we’ll find you some good Biryani”.

The interview ended with a discussion over the question that I had formulated; overall, comfortable 10 minutes in uncomfortable clothes. It felt like talking academics with freshly formed acquaintances. Expecting nothing, I went straight to bowl with my friends and my dad (who was coincidentally present in Mumbai for the day).

The final selections moved me to the clouds, though there was a sense of guilt of other (more) deserving students not getting selected. The best thing was that I’d get to spend the summer with my best friends in a new city!

Forward to May’23 – my parents and I arrived in Hyderabad to perform the most horrendous chore of finding me a good PG. Two full days of exploration led to a settlement for a newly built PG, a 15 minute-walk away from the office.

As for the office, or should I say the campus, it was the prettiest place one could work in. Gym, football field, cricket nets, TT tables, snooker tables, basketball court, library, shower rooms with complimentary towels, unlimited coffee/sprite/coke, you name it! I’m attaching some pictures to show-off the luxury.

We were welcomed by our interviewers on the first day, who turned out to be our supervisors. They showed us around and helped us set our systems up. Each (9) of us got assigned our mentors and projects, involving mainly back-end and ML. I worked with the Mortgage Backed Securities team and was responsible for developing several internal web-pages to analyse securities and track account holdings, and automation of weekly reports; largely using Python, PHP, MySQL and Excel (most of which I had to master contemporarily). The mentors and other employees were very friendly and approachable. They made us feel required, reciprocating to our doubts and opinions, and allocating us tasks that would directly assist them in making critical decisions of investing large amounts of money. I felt responsible, but simultaneously unburdened.

The office timings were super-flexible; the only constraint we had was to coincide at least a couple of hours with those of our mentors. I used to spend more time in the office than in my PG, where I went only to sleep (occasionally skipping that as well). A typical day would include walking straight to the office in my night dress at 8AM, followed by freshening up and brushing, optionally exercising, showering, and finally, watching reels while waiting for Karan and Tanay to finish their 4 hour gym-shower-breakfast routine. One of the difficulties I faced was my diet (being a Jain); complying with regularly having curd rice for lunch, watching my friends savouring their biryanis while they watched The Big Bang Theory.

I used to have a daily MS teams meeting with my mentors at 3:30PM, before which I mandatorily consumed coffee that kept me from dozing off. Once or twice, I remember waking up to being the only participant, probably after 10 minutes of “Hey Param, are we audible?”. Here’s a view that was pretty common from my desk.

Evenings were spent playing TT/snooker, and later in trying to prepare for the third year intern season. Lastly, striving to diminish the time spent in my PG for obvious reasons, I would stay in the office (completely alone except the maintenance staff, of course) up to 1-2AM and vex the cleaners with my music blasting on my laptop, or the sight of me sleeping on the reception couches.

On the last day, we made our internship presentations to the boss of the bosses; our work was thoroughly acknowledged and we were taken out for a fancy lunch.

Meanwhile in Hyderabad, we visited places like the Wonderla water park, BITS Hyderabad, malls, etc. Tanay and Chaitanya were shooed off by club bouncers (several times as far as I remember) for not being dressed appropriately.

Neither did I visit the Golconda fort, nor did my supervisors find me good Biryani; that makes us even. I’ll confess that the internship provided an excellent taste of the corporate world and gave us hands-on experience in the field of Software/Data Science; I could develop my communication skills, professionalism and most importantly my Table Tennis game (a handsome performance bonus was the cherry to the cake).