Hi, I'm Ishaan, a 23 year old living in Bangalore and running a marketing company called MarketUp. And on popular demand, this is my day in the life. I woke up at my parents'house at about 8 o'clock in the morning. I feel blessed to have my parents in the same city so I can come to them whenever I feel low or burnt out. It's Monday the 19th of July and the first thing I do after getting up is drink water and stretch my body.
I brush my teeth and wash my face before starting the day. I do a 14-hour intermittent fasting, so 8.30 is the perfect time for the first meal of the day. My mom made a protein shake with nuts and fruits.
I check my newsletter, my emails, and my messages while having them so that I'm up to date with everything that's happening. And then we hit the gym. And this is my favorite part. I got sick last month, so I wasn't able to gym consistently.
But today is a pull day. For me, discipline is the greatest form of self-love. We started with some pull ups, lat pull downs to work on the back, then did some cable rows and face pulls, called it a day with barbell curls and after some rest, hit the library to spend some time reading Airbnb's epic story. I love spending just 15-20 minutes reading, it compounds very quickly to tens of books a year. We went for a walk early morning, it just clears my head and allows me to think clearly.
Being around lush greenery feels so calm and peaceful, away from the hustle bustle of the city. After this refreshing walk, I take a bath, change clothes, have a paratha while talking to mom, and leave at 10 am for the first meeting that we have. As I said, I run a marketing agency called MarkitUp for which I meet companies to close deals. Today we are meeting Pranav from Polaris School of Technology at Wipro Park in Electronic City.
It took me one long hour to reach, but the rains and Bangalore weather completely made up for it. Pranav works in the marketing marketing team at Polaris. Polaris offers a four-year integrated B.Tech degree in CS and MLAI where students get over 5,000 hours of live coding practice. He showed me around the campus, the classrooms, the coding dens, the food court and there's even an area to chill and play. It's really cool how they are building an alternative to the traditional B.Tech degree and getting industry experts to teach you while you build exciting projects and get experience through internships.
I recently met Mukul Rustagi, who is the co-founder of Classplus and an ILTN and had a fun chat with him about it. Hi Mukul, thank you so much for coming over here. Hi Ishaan. Good to finally meet you.
I visited the event which happened in Four Seasons Mumbai by Classplus. So love the work that you've done. What have you been up to right now? I think the most exciting thing that we are doing right now is we're launching Polaris School of Technology in partnership with MSU. Medavik skills university and we are bringing a one-of-its-kind B.Tech program in computer science engineering for all the graduates who go right after class 12 I think four year integrated program of computer science engineering where it's not just about the academics But there are a few different pillars that we are trying to disrupt We have a theory that only people who have built a successful software developer career for themselves only they can teach other people how to build a successful software developer career.
So instead of getting traditional professors, what we are doing is that we are getting industry professionals, people who have a full-time job at companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon or all the other big techos of the world and they are the ones who are coming and teaching the students the same nuances and the same aspects of the job which they are currently applying in their own roles or they see being applied in their teams this also helps because these people are the closest to the real world technologies whatever latest technologies are being used in the world these are the ones who code in during the day on those technologies and the ads are the ones who on other days and other times teach their students. So I think that is one very big difference that we are doing. Traditionally we have also seen that our colleges take up employment which limit the ability of any student to go and get a placement or a job or internship or an apprenticeship, whatever it is. We have built this campus in Bangalore, which is probably like not unfair to say but it's the coding capital of the continent if not where in bangalore uh bangalore electronic city vipro campus it's heart of the employment hub like there are large companies like vipro infosys bosch hp as well as there are tech startups out there like when a student is in that vicinity when they are surrounded by people who are already pursuing the professions that they aspire to be then the entire network effect comes in they bond with similar people they get exposed to people who have essentially done what they want to do Mukul, you are an IITian yourself. When you got out of IIT, what was the flaw in the IITs and the top colleges of India that you thought, this is not the right thing to do, which is not allowing students to succeed and get...
extraordinary results in their life specifically talking about computer science engineering it is such a dynamic field tech frameworks tech syntax tech languages tech stacks tech tools all of these undergo like unlike 20 years back when new technology had a seven year cycle or a five year cycle today like technology stacks have probably a two three year old cycle and it's hard for anybody to like keep iterating curriculum at that stage Because it's not just about the curriculum. You also need to have practitioners slash professors who are acquainted with those technologies, who can come and teach that. So I think there's a dearth of that. But that is the right way.
Like, we can't become the coders of tomorrow by practicing the content of yesterday. And that is the change that we want to bring to the today of so many students in the country who essentially opt for computer science engineering and they want to build a career in software development. Give me another little more detail into the industrial curriculum that you have.
What exactly does it have? How are the semesters? How is it all designed?
Semesters and curriculum is also going to be structured by Medavi Skills University, who's our partner in this. What we essentially innovate on is that the kind of subject that we would probably put in the first. one year itself.
Like we would give them live hackathons as a part of their curriculum. We would give them live projects as a part of their curriculum. We'd invite industry professionals who are currently active software developers who can come and tell them exactly what are they looking for and people who they hire. Because these are people who are like 18 years experienced in big tech companies.
They do hiring day and night, they run their teams day and night, they do grooming day and night. More than them, no one knows what should happen in a fresher talent. So now these people coming and telling the fresher talent that this is what you need to crack the job. It's like saying a selector is telling you you how to bat in order to get selected right so i think that's a cheat code that's a great cheat code that we can facilitate in a very legitimate manner for every student similarly i think a lot of vps we'll also get a lot of vps svps ctos and engineering managers to come and give fireside chats how to not just get a job but if you want to make a career of 5-10 years in software development so all these people who have gone through that journey like how can they share experiences with these students so i think it's mostly about key rc learning my mistakes is absolutely fine but definitely having to do mistakes to learn is not the right way because time is finite in anybody's career and if people can learn from other people's learning and other people's mistakes i think that is one sort of a community networking of or a community learning thing that we want to facilitate apart from that we will also bring out some cooler things like we know that a lot of people who want to who come in tech they essentially want to become tech creators so we'll probably try to do some boot camps during the four-year program program that if there are people who are not just wanting to become software developers but they want to become tech creators this greater economy is the new normal so we'll probably facilitate something on that we are also launching something called a polaris tech combinator which is which we say that hey like becoming a software developer is a very cool thing but if you can become a tech founder and you can provide employment to 100 software engineers that's even a greater thing so some people will essentially go and during the four years they'll probably pick out an idea make a prototype and they can essentially pitch that in their polaris tech combinator and some students will definitely get like ten thousand thousand dollars of seed funding instantly on that so that's a big from polaris from polaris right so we are doing that to promote entrepreneurship amazing wish you all the best thank you so much next up we have a meeting with akshay in hsr who's building an epic app for english learning called stimuler and i had a really cool chat with him about being an iotn and building a global app from india it was 3 30 by now i was super hungry and after petting this dog i walked to the nearby california burrito and had a wholesome mexican paneer bowl you This has become my favorite meal and it's very filling with rajma, chawal, guacamole, corn, seeds and paneer.
It's time to go back to home in North Bangalore and this was a very long ride. I just fell asleep after 2 and a half hours of commute. I reached Marketups HQ aka my place by 7 pm. A quick life update, I've changed my house again to this bigger 3BHK and that's why it looks so messy and unorganized.
We wanted a place where we can hire elders, They can come and work here on site. By the way, if you're a skilled editor who can come to Bangalore, email me and let's connect. Meet my co-founder Saransh and after catching up with him on today's meetings and updates, I did some calls with my own team for content and went on to shoot a reel.
This is my studio where all the magic happens. I've invested a lot in here with custom wallpapers, lighting, great mics and camera. I keep the script on the laptop to my side when I'm shooting and it does take me a while to record it. Content creation. it's not an easy job.
I've been working really hard on my Instagram this year to get it to 1 million ASAP. Feels unreal saying this because just 5 years ago I didn't even have an account on Instagram. I've also just turned 23 and it feels like a weird place. I'm not young enough to do anything. I'm also not old enough to be taken seriously by the society.
A weird time to be in. But I still feel 18. When people used to look at me and expect nothing. But the times have changed.
Stakes have gotten bigger. More responsibilities. More expectations.
More of everything. Look at him. He makes all this money at 22. He must be so lucky.
I hear people say. I see my batchmates who have a job. They chill on the weekends. Have a life. Have a relationship.
While I'm out here having no clue what day it is, working 12-14 hours every day with no sense of balance in life. But honestly speaking, I wouldn't want it to be any other way. I then edited my reel on Final Cut Pro and sent it to my team to call it a day. Alright, that is pretty much the end of the day.
It's about 8.40 right now if you can see over here. This by the way is the latest CMF phone 1 which my friend Levi sent it to me from nothing. Thank you to Levi for this birthday gift. By the way, I'm 23 now so no longer 22 year old in the title of the video.
That was the day. I went, had a couple of meetings in Bangalore. Then we came back, recorded some content. I'm really exhausted today. Normally, I would stay awake for 3-4 hours more after this but I will have to sleep right now because I have a 7 o'clock morning flight to catch.
I'm going to Mumbai to shoot something and to have a podcast. I'll talk to you about that in the Instagram story. If you're following me on Instagram, you would know about that.
Another fun fact, we spent at least 5-6 hours stuck in Bangalore traffic throughout the whole day. But that's basically how life is in Bangalore. If you want to work, if you want to meet people, if you want to build a business, you can do it. that's the cost you have to be stuck in traffic for a long time every single day that's pretty much it thank you for watching tell me in the comment section what does your day in the life look like i'll see you all in the next video bye