"We will have our own Frappe office at Jagdalpur" told Hussain during my final semester of college (February, 2022). This was my first conversation with him after ages. And last month (June, 2025), I joined BWH Studios, what I call Mini-Frappe.

Post School Life

I still don't know how, after completing school studies (7 years back), I was on my way to pursue CA qualification. I remember I was sitting, ruminating, when my father brought me back to my senses saying "Chal, bus ka time hogaya hai (Let's go, it's almost time for the bus)". We had to leave. I became anxious on a whole new level. Internally screaming. Probably one of the very first in my list of “I didn’t know why I did what I did” decisions. I looked at my father and he uttered, "Thoda time lele... CA karna bhi hai ya nahi sochle (Take some time... Think about whether you really want to do CA or not)". I was relieved to hear it.

Though I cancelled my CA plans, I still had no idea what to do. I told one of my friends about the situation the same night. He said CG-PET(Pre Engineering Test) will be held tomorrow and I must appear for it. I totally forgot about the many exam forms that I filled, this was one of them. I did appear for it. And somehow I made my way into engineering, walking on the footsteps of my brothers. Within 12 hrs, I shifted completely from CA to Engineering. Again, I didn't know back then, if I'd get selected. Even if I did, I didn't know which branch/specialisation would be the best. Soon, I got a call from the Government Engineering College, located in my city. I had 6 branches to select from. From the many discussions that I had with my parents, brothers and friends, the best I could think of was Civil engineering. I hated the software folks for no reason 🫠. But the best that I could get from my CG-PET rank was the IT branch (Civil branch here, has quite a reputation). I tried till the last in-house counselling in the college to change to the Civil branch.

This was my last shot. In-house counselling. I was not sure if my name would be called out. I was in the conference room. The first name announced was mine. The only seat left in the branch was waiting for me. I looked around at everyone. No one knew who I was, so I quietly slipped out like it was none of my business.

Again, I let the seat go. Not sure why. But now when I look back, I don't regret these decisions. Though, this was an impulsive one and not after any sort of analysis of the situation. But still.

College Life

I took admission in Government Engineering College (GEC) Jagdalpur, a tier-3 college. My journey started the way every other engineering student’s college life starts. We had a whole lot of class tests aligned every month. 30+ assignments each semester. Our branch didn’t even have a permanent professor. Everyone was working on a temporary basis. They themselves were pursuing PhD. And as soon as we submitted all our assignments, within the blink of an eye, our end-sem exams began. We simply copied assignments and the things we learnt were of no use. The important/complex topics were skipped. We had to prepare for everything ourselves. Again, what every other engineering student does. And after 3 semesters of assignments and exams, COVID hit our blue planet.

No one attended online classes. Even the professors shared PDFs and within 5 mins our classes used to end. The only thing for which I would remember my college is the friends that I made during those 4 years. During the COVID days, we all gathered at one house and that’s how we passed our end-sems 😉. We never really cared about the unemployment phase that was about to hit us. We just enjoyed each and every day of our college life.

I still remember, there were only 2 companies from Bhilai which would visit us for campus recruitment in our final semester. Hence, during the 7th semester, I applied for off-campus placement drives offered by TCS, Wipro and Infosys. I got offer letters from TCS and Wipro. I got rejected by Infosys (maybe because I mentioned I had an offer from TCS and have already signed it 😅).

But due to COVID, remote jobs were in trend. Hence, in the last semester, I still appeared for the campus placement drives thinking maybe I'd get a remote role. I was shortlisted for the interviews. I was selected for one and got rejected by the other (can't remember the names of the organizations). The offer which I received was decent along with Hybrid work. But still I wanted something remote. It really seemed cool. People working from home or from wherever they prefer. During those days, I used to watch videos of a youtuber. He brainwashed me saying MNCs are the worst and one could easily earn by getting remote jobs through skills and by contributing to open source. This was my introduction to open source stuff.

I also needed to submit my major project. During this time, while trying to discuss ideas for the project, I also had a conversation with one of my school friends. She told me she got an internship at Frappe. She told me about the skills which would be useful. Then, I started learning web development to get an opportunity to contribute to open source and maybe a chance to get at least an internship at Frappe.

Soon after this, Hussain randomly texted me after 3-4 years of our school life. He asked me how everything was and what my plans were. He said if some of my friends and I were interested, maybe we can have our own small Frappe Office at Jagdalpur. He told me why even when HRs were approaching him, he still wanted to continue because of the company’s culture. It sounded quite exciting. He told me he'd help if I am interested. But I need to step up and constantly stay in touch with him. I stayed in touch with him for 3 weeks and also learnt front end web development. But I got sick (probably COVID, but I never took tests tbh) for a span of 2 straight weeks and I found it really, really hard to recover from it. Till then, I used to recover from illness within a couple of days. But this was the worst one. My consistency was killed and I had to submit my major project within a couple of weeks. I stopped with web development and continued to work on the project using Java. I guess I was relieved that I had 2 job offers. Hence I had stopped with new learnings.

The TCS Phase

I didn't really want to join TCS. It just didn't feel right. A week before my joining, I had a lot of conversations with my family and friends. I joined TCS as a System Engineer (the “don’t know why” decision counter has increased to 4 by now I guess) 🫠. Right after the onboarding, I just wanted to leave. I am not sure which project I was working on. I was provided with a total of 2 hours of KT sessions. And then they just assigned me tasks. I didn't even know if I had signed up for this. This was not even any testing role. 1 month of it was complete torture. I had no clue what to do and they just asked me if I had completed the tasks assigned. I somehow managed to complete 10-12 tasks in one month. But they expected me to complete at least 30-45. They just put up the numbers and simply scolded me and the other new joinees.

Anddd I didn't take much time to resign, just 45 days. The team I was in had 4 resignations during my 4.5 months of service (45 days of full-time role and 90 days of notice period). Even the other new joinees resigned.

The Post-TCS Phase

No one is actually prepared for this phase I guess. Everyone just wants to get out of the toxic environment in their job when they don't have a different option and jussst take a break. But how long is the break supposed to be? No one knows. My plan was clear. I just wanted to enjoy the FIFA World Cup. Messi wins it or not, either way I had to decide something for myself. So I just wanted to enjoy those days. And I did. Those were some of the very best moments of my life (IYKYK).

But once it was done, after a couple of weeks, it started to hit me. Now I've got nothing, but to decide what I should do next, I was not ready. I wasted two months. Two months! Though 2022 ended on a high, it was not a Happy New Year!

Joining Bastar Dairy Farm

And then on a random February Sunday, after 6-8 months of having the TCS-conversation, I received a call from Hussain. He told me his cousin brothers are starting with ERPNext implementation in their dairy farm business (BDF) and they want someone from their end to lead it. He told me that I will be trained and I could easily do it. I had the idea about ERPs but not about implementation. He was really confident about me, so I decided to take it up.

I never thought that this one decision would impact my life so much. I got to know about Frappe and ERPNext which is now a part of my life. And I don't think the Frappe in my veins would flow out easily. It has been injected on a very harmful level 💉. I started with ERPNext and few courses available in Frappe School. Those really helped. And I seemed to find this new environment pretty cool and easy as compared to whatever I used/tried to use in TCS.

The Government Job Craving

I found Frappe’s Framework awesome as a tool. During the implementation phase, there were some requirements which I started to customize and develop. I started using the Customize Form feature, creating Doctypes, and writing basic Server/Client Scripts with my little knowledge in code. ERPNext was something I learnt on the go as I was the Project Champion. But, after 3-4 months of ERPNext training, implementation sessions and go-live, even though I liked the product, the user support started to feel tedious. People raised issues, I solved them. After some point, issues were very few, just some very frequent issues which were there due to improper customizations/developments. I didn't seem to fit well.

Switching to development might have helped. I wanted some change. But those days convinced me to switch to an aspirant. Also, since my parents have been in Government jobs for their entire life, I preferred it. Job Security being the most important reason why. Also, I wanted to give Government exams a try. I wanted to experience student-life again. And during those days, I heard that one of my seniors (proper back-bencher what people would call) cleared the state PSC exams. I had my motivation.

I just wanted to start focusing on my preparations. But BDF wanted me to continue. They offered me a part-time WFH role. I liked it, as I was working and getting time to prepare for the exams as well. So I accepted it and started with the new role from September 2023. But, when I started, I was receiving calls from users very often and I was not able to focus on my studies. Issues were critical and would've impacted the business if not taken care of urgently. This vicious cycle continued till Feb 2024. I had to get out of it. March 2024 was the time I hit the rock bottom. This was the time I wanted to change every single thing in my life. I started waking up early. Started skipping. I shaved my head completely. I started meeting with my school friends. Though some things helped me gain back my discipline, I was not satisfied.

The Chowpati Pivot

I took advice from one of my friends, Akash. He has always given me the perfect advice about every situation for which I've reached out to him. I have regretted things whenever I have gone against his advice. And after having a long conversation with him, he suggested to me that I need to reach out to Hussain as I was already working at BDF and things have not been working out lately. I took Akash’s advice. I wanted a clear sky. This was the time which shaped my career-path. Hussain and I decided to meet in the only Chowpati at Jagdalpur, where we school friends often meet for a coffee. I explained everything that was going on. Looking at his reaction, I thought he didn't want to advise/suggest as I have already reached out to him a couple of times before but I didn't take it seriously. He thought about something (even I want to know what) for some time.

Then he told me you can't sail on two boats. You need to choose one. He suggested that I try for a Consultant role with my experience in BDF. He said he can refer but people have often asked him for a referral and most have never been serious about it. Most don't even do the slightest bit of what he asked them to do. I was blank and needed a major change. I just did whatever he asked me to do. He even texted one of the Partner CEOs straight away. He then asked me to update my resume and send it within 2 hours. I did. A week later, I received a call from 8848 Digital (the partner CEO was Atul himself). I had 3 interview rounds, and I got the job after the third one.

My Time @ 8848 Digital

I started at 8848 by visiting the office for the initial 3-4 days. As I had a remote role, I returned and continued working remotely. Though I didn't get to work on end-to-end implementation projects, I did get a chance to work on some phases of a few projects. I also worked on implementing Jira internally for the 8848 Digital team. This one year was really great for me. I got the opportunity to work remotely, no toxic environment and a lot of learnings from the different use cases which I got to know. My manager and senior consultants helped me explore ERPNext. I also gained hands-on experience in Jira while implementing it internally. But I didn’t find Jira to be a good tool. I was getting “Frappe attacks” whenever I was using Jira and facing issues even with the basic features. Even if the licensing part is removed, it has many limitations. It might have been better if we customized and created our own project/task management system on Frappe’s framework.

Off to BWH Studios

When I was in 8848 Digital, I had conversations with Hussain quite often. I wanted to switch to development. Even when I was working at BDF, I wanted to build new stuff. Not just customizations. I wanted to do integrations, code and have something implemented which was done by me. Also, I have seen people looking for Frappe developers. It seems there is a scarcity of good ones. I asked him if there are some courses or a roadmap that will lead me to become a good Frappe Developer. Because I have seen Hussain criticise the incompetent developers. He says the devs don't follow the conventions and are not often up to the mark. They lack quality. Hearing this from him and since I have this god-ly dev of a guy as my friend, I can take some guidance and be a good developer. But before shifting to development, since I'd already started as a consultant, I wanted to have some achievement/milestone as I have not been a part of many implementation projects.

Also during Diwali last year, Hussain expressed that he had plans to start his own thing. Ofc not sure when, but he wanted to. Soon, we started to have frequent chats, discussions about this. We started with setting up ERPNext. Soon he got one developer (Akash, the adviser’s brother, read his journey here). Then around April this year, Hussain gave me a call straight from Africa and said he wanted me onboard. He would also be resigning in the coming days. And since he said he is leaving Frappe, I knew things were getting serious. I knew the day had come. This was one of the very few decisions which felt right and I was the one driving it. It was not one of the “not sure why” decisions. I decided to join the team and left 8848 Digital.

The first thing I had to do was get certified in ERPNext. I enrolled for it during the first week of my joining. There were also some other setup and operational stuff which also needed to be figured out. I spent a couple of weeks completing the assignments and then prepared for things I didn’t know (mostly related to accounts). I completed some more assignment sheets sent by Chandru, but I still wanted to get hands on everything. I scheduled the evaluation sooner than I would have, otherwise I’d have dragged it for a few more weeks. Anddd after weeks of preparation, I earned my ERPNext Consultant Certification.

At BWH Studios, we ourselves are relying on all the Frappe Apps available to get the most out of them. We have implemented ERPNext internally. We use CRM to capture leads and communications. We use Raven for communication. Even for reminders, Raven automations are just too good and way too easy to use. We have already started documenting stuff on Wiki. And as soon as our first E-commerce project goes live, we will use Helpdesk for the issues raised by our client. I have been implementing ERPNext and the other Frappe apps and it’s been fun!

Ever since I heard about Frappe’s culture, I’ve been craving to live it. And we have made sure that we also set a high bar for our culture and we have started taking steps in the right direction. I don’t feel the need to think about what I am doing here or I don’t belong or there is someone sitting on top of my head scrutinizing my work. Everyone learns new things everyday. No pressure to reach the office early, we have flexible working hours, also we don't fill in timesheets. We do post daily work updates, not for time tracking but to keep everyone in sync. We have round table all-hands meeting weekly where we don't just focus on our last week numbers, we talk about the steps we are taking to achieve our ultimate goal and if there's any blocker that needs to be addressed. There is a sense of accountability in everyone. It’s been fun working here. A nice little team is already shaping up. Anddd there’s a lot more to come and for us to achieve…

…the Road Ahead

Since last week, I have started my transition to be a developer. I have started with CS50's Introduction to Computer Science course.

It’s been one hell of a ride. My next step? Frappe Developer Certification! 🫡