When Shloka Ashok was in Class 10, she was interested in the world of business and was looking to do an internship to get with the ground realities. And so, she checked out a few start-ups and corporate companies which is when she hit a roadblock - nobody was offering internships to 16-year-olds.
That's when it struck her that she probably wasn't alone - and so, she thought of starting a platform called InternMee which connects high school students with different start-ups for internships and projects.
Shloka explains, "Finally, last year, I was able to complete my internship because my parents called in a favour with their friends. But I felt it was unfair as they did not gauge my skills and I was hired purely on the basis of their recommendation. This made me think about other students who would want to do their internship and look for different companies, but are helpless as they don't get an opportunity anywhere. I also conducted a survey among 350 students across the globe and found out that 95 per cent of them were thinking to do an internship, but didn't know where to begin."
On December 23, 2020, Shloka launched InternMee, which is a platform purely for students run by students. Shloka, who is currently studying in Class 11 at Bengaluru's Greenwood High School, says, "The type of internships that students want to take up and the connections they want to make do matter for their future. Through InternMee, we connect students with start-ups as well as NGOs or social initiatives that they'd be interested in volunteering for. We also connect them with other student-run organisations. All this is for free and we don't charge a single rupee for connecting students and companies with each other."
Shloka claims that the main idea behind InternMee is to make internships, companies and their contacts more accessible to students. "We don't charge the companies either on our platform. But what we have started monetising is the partnerships or collaborations that we post on our website and Instagram page. We have a good number of followers on Instagram and most of our audience is in the 14-25 age group. In the past six months, we have got 30,000 sign ups from students across 75 countries for internships and volunteering."
