Getting into IIT in India means clearing JEE Advanced, one of the most competitive entrance exams in the world. Your rank determines what you study.

Ananya wanted computer science. She was admitted to electrical engineering instead.

"During 11th and 12th I was studying for JEE Advanced, which is the gate to IIT. That exam didn't go well for me and because of my rank I ended up in electrical engineering. My aim was computer science. From the start I liked computer science but the only reason I got into electrical engineering was my rank."

She accepted the degree but did not let it determine the kind of engineer she would become.

The first two years shared many of the same foundations as computer science: programming, algorithms, and data structures. By the third year, the curriculum shifted deeper into electrical engineering. She realized that if she wanted to become a software engineer, she would have to build that education herself.

"In the third year it was more core electrical engineering which I didn't like at all. That was frustrating. In the fourth year we get to choose our own courses, so I chose artificial intelligence and other computer science courses because I wanted to learn more.”

She also had to teach herself everything the interviewers would expect CS graduates to already know.

"For computer science students they are taught in classrooms what the interviewers will ask. For me, there were many courses like operating systems and DBMS which I wasn't taught and I had to do on my own on LeetCode. That is what gives you practice, that gives you problem solving skills. That is very necessary for every student right now. That is what is required for you to get into a startup or any other tech company."

By the time she graduated, she had solved more than 700 coding problems.

Before Jurin AI, Ananya interned at EY. The internship taught her that she wasn't looking for a large company. She was looking for a place where she could build things end to end.

"Most of my work was bug fixes. As an intern, you're only a small part of a much bigger organization. I wanted broader technical exposure, and I wasn't getting it."

Around the same time, she also spent a few months working with a college alumnus building a mental wellness platform. She learned Figma and explored product design alongside engineering.

"I enjoyed thinking about how users experience a product and how everything fits together. But that experience also made me realize something: I enjoy engineering more than design. That's where I want to spend my time."

When Jurin AI visited IIT Jodhpur to recruit, the openings were for computer science and AI students only. Ananya reached out to our first engineer directly.

"I saw the hiring process was open, so I texted Yash on LinkedIn: I am interested and this is my resume, I would like to have an interview. He scheduled my first interview with him, and later a product demo with him and Rise."

The interview process wasn't just about technical ability. Rise also wanted to make sure candidates understood what working at a startup actually meant.

"We talked about the 996 work culture, that you won't have your Sundays off and you’ll have to balance your personal and professional life. I was like, okay! I was comfortable with it from the very beginning. What else is there to do for me at home? At this stage of life, I just want to work."

If anything, Jurin’s 996, i.e., work life harmony, only added to the appeal. She was also impressed by the people she would be working with.

"Rise understands both engineering and product deeply. As an engineer, I really admired that. I also like the flexibility. I'm naturally more productive at night than in the morning, so having the freedom to work when I'm at my best is a big plus."

For the first several months at Jurin AI, Ananya was doing two things at once. During the day she had classes, labs, assignments, and final year projects. Outside class she was attending meetings, shipping features, and meeting customer deadlines.

"I started as an intern, I was still in college, so there was a hard time balancing everything. I had to go to classes, labs, do college assignments and projects and then manage the meetings and engineering work as well.”

Despite that, she was already responsible for the notification pipeline behind the Jurin AI app.

"The pace here is exactly how Rise describes it: ship, ship, ship, iterate, iterate, iterate."

One of the biggest learning experiences came during the team's three-branch release, a major architectural project that demanded long hours of collaboration.

"The three-branch release was the most challenging thing we have done. Our team lead guided us through the architecture and every stage of the implementation. There was a time in February where we used to sit for 8 to 10 hours all four of us in a meeting and work together. That was insane."

But the hardest moment she can recall was a hard customer deadline.

"There was a feature for a customer that had to deploy on Sunday night. We got that pull request merged one or two hours before the deployment. That taught me that you should be very careful about customer deadlines. Internal deadlines can be flexible but if a customer deadline is on the 12th you should get it done by the 10th so you have enough time to test. That was the most challenging one for me: to meet the customer deadline and do the feature properly without any bugs."

It was one of the first times she experienced the difference between shipping a feature and delivering for customers. Building the feature was only part of the job. Planning ahead, leaving time to test, and earning the customer's trust mattered just as much.

"Rise shares a lot of what he's learned from previous startups in our weekly All Hands, and even what he's learning now at the University of Tokyo. Sometimes it's about engineering, sometimes it's completely different topics like DNA. It gives you a different perspective because you're exposed to ideas you probably wouldn't come across on your own.”

Over time, the broader perspective changed how Ananya approached her own work.

"One thing Rise always emphasizes is that every feature you're building will eventually be used by a customer. You have to think about how it feels to use the product, not just whether the code works. If you're using the Jurin app yourself and you think the experience could be better, you should improve it. Product thinking is probably the biggest thing I've learned here."

The same mindset carries into how the team shares knowledge everyday.

"There are channels where people report bugs, share postmortems, and document lessons from customer projects. You learn from other people's experiences just by seeing what they're working on and how they approach problems. That's one of my favorite parts of the Jurin culture.”

The more she learned from the people building the product, the more curious she became about the people using it.

She hasn't worked directly with customers yet, but she already sees how closely engineering and customer experience are connected.

"The customer-facing teams see firsthand what's working, what isn't, and why customers make certain decisions. That's a perspective I really want to develop. Until I get that opportunity myself, I'll keep learning from the engineering side.”

"I've spent a lot of time learning from the people around me, and I'm grateful for that. I see myself in the next year as someone people trust to take ownership of bigger problems, lead projects, and eventually lead a team."

On what it actually takes to do any of this: