I studied computer applications at Dr. Virendra Swarup Institute of Computer Studies, not at an IIT. By the end of it I was the GenAI engineer for an AI-first studio, had won three hackathons — two of them at IIT Roorkee and CSJMU — and had shipped five production AI apps. None of that was on the syllabus. Here is the path as I would describe it to an engineering student today, without the motivational gloss.
Know the gaps
A typical tier-2 college syllabus gives you programming fundamentals, databases and a project. It usually does not give you Python at production depth, deployment, version control as a habit, or anything current in AI. Those are the gaps; they are all fillable outside class, and most of them in a semester.
Fill them with projects, in order
- A deployed web app with a database — the floor.
- A RAG project with evaluation numbers over something local: your college's documents, a shop's catalogue.
- One fine-tuning or vision project on free hardware.
- One of them taken to real users.
That is the GenAI engineer roadmap, and it does not care which college you attend.
Where the opportunities actually are
- Hackathons at bigger institutes are open to everyone. Krishi Gyan won Changethon at IIT Roorkee as a team from a tier-2 college.
- Local communities — MeetKats ran BYTEBATTLE, which Annapurna won. Every city has one.
- Remote roles and startups judge the repository, not the campus; see getting a remote GenAI role from a tier-2 city.
- Freelance and client work — SCULT INDIA started as three students shipping paid products.
What the college does give you
Time, a peer group and a stage. TechVerse Enclave started as a few students at VSICS helping each other build; the college gave us a seminar hall for the AI Mentorship Session and the induction. Use the institution for what it is good at — community and rooms — and the internet for the rest.
The honest part
Campus placements at a non-IIT college will offer fewer AI roles. That is a reason to build a visible portfolio early, not a reason to give up on the field. The recruiters who found me found projects and posts, not a college name.
GenAI engineer and AI product builder with 2+ years shipping production-grade AI systems: RAG pipelines, fine-tuned LLMs, hybrid retrieval and multi-modal apps across vision, speech and OCR, architected end to end from ingestion to deployment. Leads engineering for SCULT INDIA's 14-member team, founded the 500+ member TechVerse Enclave community and has mentored 200+ students. Three hackathon first prizes: Changethon 2025 (IIT Roorkee), Product Genesis at Vividhotsava 2025 (CSJMU Kanpur) and BYTEBATTLE (MeetKats).
Open to GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at colleges. Email pranjulrathour41@gmail.com.
