Pence Mataria is a graduating Y17 student from the Department of Aerospace Engineering. He explains how he made tough decisions and handled various ups and downs during his stay at IITK.
Disclaimer:- The views presented below are the author’s own and are not in any manner representative of the views of Vox Populi as a body or IIT Kanpur in general. This is an informal account of the author’s experiences at IIT-K.
Life’s interesting; you must live every moment of it to the fullest. I’ll narrate my Life at IITK from a drone’s eye view of time. Let me equip you with a bit of my background to understand my story better. Since my childhood, I was interested and a bit passionate about science. I got inspired by one of my neighbours and learnt that there exist dedicated institutes for technology. That was the time I set my goal and decided to get in there. One thing to highlight here is that I had a long-term plan and a short-term goal at every walk of my life. Growing up in a state like Gujarat amidst a family engaged in Business polarises you towards the same. That’s what my long-term goal became – to grow and nurture an epic business empire. Path and purpose are independent in some way. The path was unclear to me, but the goal was quite explicit. It was the glamour of being into IIT and passion for tech that brought me here.
Aerospace was something that intrigued me, but I wasn’t a diehard fan of it. It was the most exciting department I could get based on my rank. Among all the other Aerospace’s, Kanpur was the only one I envisioned mainly because of the Airstrip. Though, it had been a cliffhanger entry for me into IITK. But then things went smoothly, and I am glad that I successfully graduated from here. I am pretty sure not many people know this, but hello! You are hearing gyan from a “Dhakan” (lingo for the last candidate in the general rank list) of Y17-Aerospace.
After coming to campus, we were introduced to all the gymkhana stuff, festivals, dept labs, and most importantly, unique beings. Like an over admired fresher, I thought of trying everything to find a path to help me connect my long-term goals. I kept attending all the SnT workshops due to my interest in technology. I joined Dramatics Club to bring justice to my little childhood interest in acting. I joined the marketing team of the festival due to my drive to learn Business. I was a national level qualified Air Rifle Shooter. When I discovered that we have a shooting club on the campus, it awoke the dead shooter inside me. So, I joined this club. Coming to acads, I was overwhelmed by other things, and thus I might have diverted the academic share of energy to non-acads. However hard I tried, the L20 back seats were just too cosy for a refreshing sleep. But surprisingly, with collaborative efforts, I managed these to a decent mark along with all the other engagements.
Then I came across the opportunity of contesting in senator’s elections. My main motive was to understand all the aspects of campus and take myself a bit higher on the leadership game. Contesting elections was a great experience. Thus my tenure in the Senate added to the memories I would cherish in future.
I used to enjoy the working and learning process, which made me push myself to work without any sort of aloofness. This quality-made me sort of excel at what I did. So, Acads check, hobby as drams check, learning Business & Management aspects via marketing check ( I was learning things genuinely; not just fest feels), leadership check, technology & robotics check. Then came the SnT team’s recruitment. My eyes got laid on this new team which was a combination of my field (Aerospace) and my passion for robotics – Aerial Robotics. I buckled up to sincerely devote my time and attention to it. There were around 30 students under a Y15 senior. I managed to excel in this too. I performed well in multiple roles in dramatics, grasped things well in Aerial Robotics, made positive & engaging connections in the Senate and broke some marketing deals in Udghosh.
So, things were progressing, and time started squeezing. It was time to have serious engagements to balance time and learning. I realised that I had to drop something out; I chose dramatics. Gathering the courage to convince the dramatics club senior was the most challenging part. But this is how we learn things. I learnt the art of saying no in the best way. Today, I still share a positive relationship with all of them. A year passed, and I became a senior member at my roles in the AR team and Udghosh, and became the coordinator at the shooting club.
As time was passing, significant responsibilities were waiting for me. The Festival Core team and Ex-core team had high hopes for me. On the other hand, only three people, including me, were left in the aerial robotics team. Shooting club became a low priority for me despite some big goals like developing a shooting range on our campus. It was the time when I started introspecting about what exactly I wanted to do. After analysing my work and future in fest’s team and AR’s team, I concluded that the AR team needs me. There were high chances if I would have left, the team might have dissolved since there was no one with that motivation to grow the team, whereas there are many people to keep the fest going. I started looking at my team from an entrepreneurial lens. It was very analogous to a tech start-up. I had the opportunity to grow it and, in the process, learn all the critical management things that will help me in the true sense. But now, the mammoth task was to convince the Type A personalities of the festival for my resignation. I took the courage, went to Hall1, and told them my way of thinking. Of course, they tried to persuade me, but I stayed firm and handed it delicately. Today, they are very close seniors with whom I chat pretty often.
Days passed, and summers arrived. We were aiming for an international competition. But along with that, I wanted to do a sanity check whether I was fit for research or not and hence, I planned to get into SURGE. While I was pursuing this project, something remarkable happened. There was a government seed scheme from which we can get some funds to develop stuff with start-up potential. Prof had already registered for that. But the catch was, we had to present and pitch and compete at various stages to get that. And yes, I was the one who took it up. I went to Bombay for a pitching event. I worked a lot on my decks. Within a brief span, I grasped all the fundraising gyans. And I made my first formal pitch! (I did that before at techkriti competitions, but that was very naïve) And yeah, we made it. It was a massive achievement for me. It was a small sum of INR 10 lacs, but I did it almost single-handedly. In all this, along with managing Aerial Robotics, my summertime got over. So, something which I intended as technical research during my summers ended up being a fundraising self-learned internship. We had some mandatory presentations at the end of SURGE, but I managed that within a few days based on some minor work that we had done. The prof. expected us to continue the project since our money was stuck in there, but I felt a bit reluctant. But we didn’t close the project. Instead, I focused entirely on the competition during those few months. The competition was approaching, and despite putting in lots of hard work, we were not able to reach a place where we could call ourselves prepared. Things were working but unreliably. We spent most of our last week at Heli lab – slept and worked there. Finally, the day came when we boarded for Madrid (my first international trip). The trip was limited to competition as nobody was in a mood to enjoy Spain post-competition. The weather conditions were quite harsh as per our systems there. One of the systems crashed during the final run. We didn’t make it to the podium, but we learned a lot from other people. Most importantly, we made numerous international connections. After the run, everyone seemed relieved and focused on interviewing other teams about their methods. We concluded that we overcomplicated the stuff. The key was to keep it simple. And on further thoughts, not just technically, but this became another Gyan point of my life. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” is valid at every walk of life. Also, this gave me a solid opportunity where despite the stressful situations (the baggage of name & fame), I learned to exhibit and impart motivation and calm.
After coming back, I suffered from something called burnout. I was almost on the verge of dropping the UAV field altogether but somehow didn’t. It took me a month or so to recover. Around November, Inter IIT made us pull our strings. We engaged ourselves for the next twenty days or so. And we were in the raging fire to success no matter what. We applied all our Madrid learnings, and unlike before, I was kind of satisfied with our preparations. We went there and made a blazing victory. We were the only team to complete the problem statement with record-breaking results. This moment gave a massive dose of a boost to everyone in the team and the contingent. We made new connections with DRDO and became the most eyed team in the nation. The key takeaways are never quit from what you feel doing. Follow your instincts. Your instincts will be good when you are good.
The internship prep period was somewhere between this. I finally decided that I am not made for closed-door research stuff and wanted to break into the commercial world as soon as possible. I didn’t sit for the internship drive. I started applying off-campus at e-taxi companies and drone industry giants overseas for hardware or managerial roles but received late or negative replies. Meanwhile, Airbus came with interesting profiles. I thought to give it a chance. The plan was to get into the aviation field and move to managerial roles at a later stage. With some close contacts and requests, I got a late entry to the portal. I was pretty sure about my selection for the same, despite zero preparations, because I believed myself to be an ideal candidate for the role. And Bingo got offered in the first interview itself!
Then we had general elections. I got the opportunity to lead the same as Associate head SnT council. The decision criteria were: this position would give me another moment to hone my managerial skills and a chance to make some impact. I had always envisioned the teams at par with the most admired global teams from prominent universities. And this was the moment to push it and bring it to life.
Lockdown gave a whole different set of experiences and learnings at home. My Intern was going to get started in midsummers. But since the project required physical presence, it got cancelled. I wasn’t worried but instead started focusing on developing more business-related insights by attending online MBA courses and helping graduated seniors in the same to get a natural feel of the industry. The council activities got hampered a lot. Funding for teams was no longer a priority for the Institute, which we did acknowledge since it was a difficult time indeed.
The next significant phase were placements. I never prepared for competitive programming or software because I didn’t want to do any of that in the long term. Instead, I found an ideal role that suited me in every perspective—product management. I selectively applied only where I felt myself to be capable of and confident. My application list was far smaller than others, but I knew I’d make it. I bagged a product role at an MnC company. The story after that has more thrills and will keep on going forever. That’s life! Interesting and lively. In totality, just buckle up and enjoy the ride.
Life’s about making conscious decisions; you take one, give all in, and never look back
Written by- Pence Mataria
Edited by- Jiya Yadav, Abhimanyu Sethia
