The reliable pillar behind Grabhouse – Nimit Agrawal
Editor-Himansu sekhar samal
An entrepreneurial fanatic, Nimit Agrawal juggled with a couple of
ideas during his college days but failed to climb up the hill. In 2013,
after graduating in Computer Science from NIT
Durgapur, he was looking to work for an organisation that could be more
of a learning platform than just a regular job. Months of interviews
and rejections left him in a state of pessimism. Since his application was on an executive search portal, Nimit one
fine evening received a call from Prateek Shukla, CEO and Founder of Grabhouse.
Over a long chat, Prateek narrated him the entire vision of Grabhouse.
Sadly, at point in time, he had to reject the offer and return home to
join his family business. However, within six months he managed to
convince his parents and onboarded Grabhouse in February 2014. Nimit Agrawal, Software Engineer, Grabhouse“Hadn’t Prateek been flexible with dates, I would have missed the opportunity,” recalls Nimit (27). He joined Grabhouse as a Software Engineer.
Eventually, he got involved in product design, business development,
customer experience, and more. Launched in July 2013, Grabhouse.com is a
community-based online platform for finding rented accommodation. The
portal uses a proprietary engine to map the needs and preferences of
prospective tenants and house owners. The search process goes beyond
basic parameters such as budget and location to recommend the best
matches.
“From the very beginning, we were more focussed on technology”
Nimit stated that Grabhouse started with a basic PHP framework with
MYSQL, a monolithic architecture. Then they jumped to the next version –
hybrid database (MYSQL + NoSQL) – to escalate the searching process. Grabhouse Team
As we expanded, we started facing performance issues.
Although we vertically scaled, it was just a temporary fix. We also
started facing problems like longer development cycles and late
deployments. Therefore, we dived deep into design improvements and
started exploring different stacks,” avers Nimit.
Once the problem was identified, they moved away from monolithic
architecture to microservices architecture, which cluster things in
modules and each module function individually. The focus was also on the
data science, machine learning, and developing internal tools to
provide better insights on the product. Grabhouse currently has 16 people in the tech team, including
Platform, UI, QA, and Android. Nimit stated that the breakthrough moment
in Grabhouse was when they launched “Post your requirement feature”, which helped them gain significant consumer traction as it proved to be helpful for better matches.
Educational and professional journey
Born and brought up in Nepal, Nimit was more inclined towards
programming since school days. He hosted his first app on Geocities when
he was just 14 years old. Later he moved to Kota
to prepare for JEE, but regrettably could not qualify. However, it was
not too late as fortune turned the wheel and he cracked the COMPEX Nepal
Scholarship exam (an entrance exam in Nepal organised by the Indian
Embassy) and landed up in NIT Durgapur in 2009. Later he interned in IIM-A and Neogen Labs in different roles and launched an online music portal, Shuffle, but could not take off and shut it down. Contended Nimit says,
Now I am enjoying the ride with Grabhouse. At a startup,
you will have to help create everything from scratch, imagine, and
develop the workflows that best fit the company. In Grabhouse, I always
have been motivated and given the opportunity to take ownership of
things.”
When asked about the promotion, Nimit stated that irrespective of the
job, he is growing and learning every day. The amount of experience he
gained is more than just a promotion.
Appreciation for hard work
According to Pankhuri Shrivastava, Co-founder and CMO of Grabhouse,
Nimit was one of the first members to join the Grabhouse team, and has
seen the company grow to a team of 100 members. She further adds that
initially people were hired on the basis of their passion and Nimit had
infectious energy, which he wanted to channelise in building something
from ground up. In last two years, Nimit has shown persistence and
determination to ship faster, initiate challenging projects and take
responsibility of everything he and his team have done. Flat hierarchy, no boss culture, flexible work hours, bonding with
each other and mind boggling puzzles define the work culture of
Grabhouse. It also has a gym and table tennis room for the employees to
stay fit and happy.
Working at a startup is a wonderful way to acquire
experience and continue learning while doing real work in a dynamic
environment. I learned a lot about what a startup actually is, made a
load of mistakes, and went through the biggest personal change of my
entire life. Working under pressure and performing well is what I value
the most,” signs off Nimit.
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