Groww-ing
My first startup experience
Success cannot be summoned with money. You dream big. You put your heart, soul and effort to that one single endeavor, only then can victory be yours
- Anonymous
It was 2016 and the last day of exams at college. The last day of college holds great significance in my life. For when I came home that night, I found a plane ticket to Bangalore!
And thus, started my journey at Groww!
I was a nervous wreck on my first day. Not quite sure of how to conduct myself in a corporate setting, I mostly stayed quiet. In my first meeting, I did not speak a word and understood nothing of what was being discussed.
Back then, Groww did not have an office of its own. The six of us (Lalit, Harsh, Ishan, Neeraj, John and I) worked from a cabin at a co-working space.
After a few days of being quite, Harsh finally told me, “You know you’ve been here for a few days and you haven’t spoken to us much. Why don’t you take some time out and get to know us better” and so my first ever task was to get to know the founders!
I realized at that moment that I’m working with some of the brightest minds and this is my opportunity to lap as much knowledge as I could.
When I joined Groww, John had already built an app, but we were still contemplating a few of its features. The team decided that it would be feasible to make a website, as we were making various changes to the app and users would have to repeatedly keep updating it.
React was new at that time and when I was asked to learn to React and build a website from scratch it was definitely a big learning opportunity for me.
Once there was a Server Side Rendering with Redux issue and both John and me were not sure how to fix the problem. Google couldn’t help us here, as React was at a nascent stage and there was hardly any information on the internet.
John and I stayed up for two nights, thought about nothing, but the snag and we finally fixed it! That was the first sense of achievement that I experienced.
Also, I learned how to multi-task. A perennial manpower crunch in startups mostly mean you will be drowning in work, apart from handling your own share of the work you will also have to chip in with other tasks and duties. In my case, I was trying to make changes in our logo, trying to create a Facebook bot to answer user queries, working on machine learning, writing some APIs, providing customer support from time to time and mostly working on the website.
Working in a startup will teach you some valuable lessons on how to deal with work pressure and juggle multiple roles and responsibilities.
It was not all work though, one day, the six of us went out for dinner and since I was the newest and a fresher, they said, “Lets rag Vikas! Let’s make him sing” and yes, I did sing at the restaurant.
Another day, Lalit asked John and me, “Do you guys have a girlfriend?” we nodded our heads and said “No” to which he said, “I knew the answer”.
Initially, I was intimidated by the co-founders, but gradually I realized how privileged I was to learn from each of them. Each of their abilities is so profound and the fact that I had the opportunity of being mentored by them at the initial phase of my career, is a proud achievement that I carry.
Through the initial stint, John guided me vastly. Whether it was playing foosball every day, sending me reading materials or doing the several night outs that we did, my journey at Groww would not have been the same without him. In fact, the entire team at Groww, old employees and new helped me realize my potential.
Working at Groww really helped make me appreciate the group of like-minded, achievement-oriented individuals, and I realized that together is far greater than the sum of its part, dramatically leveraging each other’s success. And my biggest takeaway from Groww is to have met so many amazing people along the way! No words can express how grateful I am.
In these three years, Groww has deployed several major updates. The team has expanded to large numbers, some of the sharpest minds in the industry work with us and although it does feel surreal, even today when I walk into the office, I feel like it’s my first day!
I think of how we can make our product better, uplift our core values of customer obsession, build an user-friendly interface and climb to the top spot.
And I know that we’ve come a long way, but we have an even longer way to groww!
