After I resigned Real Bridge Consulting Pvt Ltd, I was ready to move back to my student life. I was waiting for my counseling and start of college. Besides this one more opportunity was waiting for me. It was not even two days after my resignation; few of the ex-employee of Real Bridge decided to quit the job to start their own. I was requested to have a friendly meet over a coffee. The talk was all about starting a new company and I was supposed to walk into the startup as web developer. I agreed to work for them, but as part time. Since it was a startup they said “That’s fine”.
The experience at Jars InfoTech was completely different. None of the things were organized. We were slowly setting up everything one by one. There was must to do but was waiting for the right time. I have to make few decisions on the technology such as programming language, e-mail system, hosting and domain and so on. That environment in the new office was full of fun. Since it is a start, I as a web developer had very less job. This gave me opportunities learn more, other than technology; most of the operations were transparent and discussed in groups.
Within few days of launching the company, we found a need for a company website. That was the first point of hurdle. We don’t have a designer yet in the company. Hiring a new one is not affordable and also it’s not easy to get one. After roaming around for a freelancer designer for a week or so, we gave up and decided to launch a company website with a free template. Availability of free template over internet is known to me much before and recommended it on the day one, but other people of the company said “let’s have our own design”. Finally one issue is solved.
Soon after the website, a debate started in the company about hosting provider. Few people in the company had more trust on local players, but I strongly recommended an international player – Go Daddy. Finally we went with a local player HostingSeva which later resulted in many problems due to their poor service and support. This was a good lesson for me. I learnt that India is still not good to provide low cost hosting for small business.
The very next requirement raised by the team was something different from everything which I did before. It was all about company e-mail id for every employee. I knew that it needs a mail server to be setup. But was not aware about how small business affords it. Very soon I discovered that Google Apps is free and provide a 50 free email for a company. “That’s great” said the members in the company when I educated them about this. Till date the company uses the Google Apps and that was a good move.
Our actual business idea was to set up a bingo sites. All that I have done till now is just basic need of the every business. That’s what I realized later. There is still long way ahead! But by this time I had learnt an important aspect of business – Cost of any product is much more important than its huge set of features.
Few weak easily passed away trying to solve problems with HostingSeva, without any progress. Then finally I decide not to deal with HostingSeva anymore and give idea with what I have. This restricted my skills to do something new. There is the important take way here – Infrastructure of a company is important for company’s progress. If management don’t solve these kind of issues soon then employee’s behavior changes.
On my journey with Jars InfoTech, there was a huge u turn ahead. I was supposed to redesign a bingo sites which is developed with an unknown programming language – JSP. It wasn’t just JSP, it was a framework build with it and this framework have no documentation. “Ok! This time ghosts have built a team”, I said for myself. The original developer of the site lived in UK and he transferred me few knowledge about the framework. With a small knowledge about the framework, I started to develop the site. Most of the code I wrote was on a wide guess. Added to this, I didn’t have staging area so I have to work with the live site. In spite of all this the experience was great.
In between all this I made my mind to install Ubuntu server at the office. This took me a week to learn different aspects of the server. I ran a small internal site in the office for few days using this server. Later in few months I decide to resign this job as I felt that it’s time to concentrate on studies. Even though I am happy about what I did at the company, there is always a small dissatisfaction left behind. I woudn’t exploit the full power of Ubuntu server which I installed.
I started concentrating of my personal projects and studies. I thought I am completely out of the company, but company didn’t. All the time there was a touch between me and the company. That was a good relationship which is helping me even today to discover more.