Draup, an AI-driven data-powered company, believes that its soul lies in technology and people around it who are leveraging big data and artificial intelligence to empower the decision-makers at the enterprises. To keep up with the growing demands of the consumers and to stay competitive, the application development team at Draup has played a crucial role in the scripting of Draup’s success story.

The applications team at Draup is ensuring data accuracy and maintains fast code release to accommodate multiple features quickly and with optimal solutions. They keep looking for better approaches or ideas to scale the platform which can keep Draup always ahead of their competitors.

Md Mahabub Alam and Prahlad Rayapu, who lead the software development team at Draup share how the startup is enabling a challenging as well as an exciting environment for the team to thrive and succeed in their tech careers.

Finding solutions to cater to competitive needs

Mahabub, who has been working at Draup for over a year now, enjoys being a part of a team that is obsessed with solving problems. “Handling large data sets to keep low response time is always a challenge for a data-driven platform. For instance, a task that used to take eight hours to push 1 million records of executives in our database now merely takes a couple of seconds. Solving such problems brings a lot of satisfaction to us,” he says.

Consumer behaviour is constantly changing and businesses are increasingly relying on data to cater to their target audience. Mahabub believes, “The industry is becoming more competitive with each passing day. As a team, we not only have to deal with technical issues but also be mindful of the latest trends. All of these challenges make our work even more interesting as there are limitless possibilities to how we can make our platform even better.”

Culture of collaboration

One of the early employees at Draup, Prahlad talks about the accommodative and friendly work culture at the company. “I like how everyone here is reachable irrespective of the projects they are working on. We have weekly sync ups and a group tech talk session where we discuss innovative solutions to difficult problems. All of this helps us grow individually,” he shares.

“From designing to execution, developers at Draup own the project that they work on. Having worked at multiple tech companies, I can say with confidence that this is by far the best work environment I have ever experienced in terms of creativity and friendliness amongst co-workers,” adds Prahlad.

Draup founders make it a point to connect with all employees one-on-one to understand various challenges faced by the team and work in collaboration to find solutions.

Vamsee Tirukkala, Co founder and CCO at Draup says, “We at Draup, believe in ‘Responsibility with Collaboration’ across our organizations. Each individual in our team has a core responsibility of her/his activity. Ownership is a powerful driver for building innovative solutions and motivating them to solve complex problems. This ownership culture eliminates hierarchy or team friction and fosters hyper collaboration amongst the teams bringing exponential capabilities to our organization.”

Upskilling while working

Every day is an opportunity to learn and upskill for the tech team at Draup. From weekly tech talks to virtual training sessions, there is plenty of scope to excel at work. Kashish Jajodia, CTO at Draup, talks about the thought process behind such sessions.

“While doing a task, research is mostly limited to a specific topic. But sessions like tech talks provide us with an opportunity to explore new tech trends. Recent sessions turned out extremely useful in terms of understanding the infra (DevOps tech talk) like Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible, efficient use of databases, SSO capability integration etc. We also encourage and enable all our colleagues irrespective of the team to learn and keep themselves updated with latest technologies and tools.” he explains.

Kashish adds, “These sessions act as a great confidence booster for employees who deliver the tech talk. At Draup, every discussion is a chance to learn something new, we can upskill over a cup of tea or even a foosball game for that matter.”

Autonomous, open and flat culture

Draup follows an autonomous, open and flat hierarchy that stimulates collaboration between employees and management. The company believes in an open culture that ensures accessibility and friendliness across hierarchy, thereby resulting in faster communication and better information flow.

For Mahabub, Prahlad, and the entire team, Draup feels like home where colleagues trust and value each other. Neither there are Monday blues at the workplace nor is there a rush to get things completed on a Friday. And, there are tons of pizza/beer parties as well!