We sat down with Aayush to chat about his journey at YouTrip. Find out more about the challenges he faced, plus tips and tricks to keeping yourself motivated and engaged when working from home!
What do you do at YouTrip, and what aspects of your role do you enjoy the most?
I’ve been with YouTrip for more than two-and-a-half years as a back-end engineer — maintaining the business logic in our architecture and writing awesome codes that make our app sustainable, reliable and secure to use.
What I enjoy most about my job is working with talented engineers to ideate new ways to build on the YouTrip app to make it customer-friendly. Having an ultra-simple-to-use interface is what we pride ourselves on — knowing that our innovations make the payment experience smoother for users, and in turn, make the job of our Customer Service support team easier. This is what gives me that sense of accomplishment!
How has the YouTrip journey been for you thus far?
Mission accomplished: building a sandcastle with the team
I worked in the YouTrip Hong Kong office when I first joined in 2019, and have been working remotely from India for almost a year.
It was a privilege to have contributed to the many milestones that YouTrip has achieved in just a short amount of time. My first year was filled with many memorable moments — launching the YouTrip card and app in Thailand, working on numerous feature releases on the app, UX enhancements and developments to strengthen our payment infrastructure.
When the pandemic hit last year, we were faced with a new set of challenges as users switched from using YouTrip as a travel wallet to their go-to card for overseas online shopping. As the engineering team, we worked hard to doubly ensure that users’ online transactions were made in a safe and secure manner.
Besides our YouTrip app for consumers, we are also in the process of developing our new B2B corporate card, YouBiz, and I’m so excited for its launch!
How do you keep yourself motivated and engaged when working from home?
“My team is not just great at their job, we also find time to have fun during breaks!”
In February 2020, I went back to India to get married. However, the pandemic hit shortly after, and that marked the commencement of my remote-working.
Like many others, it was a whole new experience. I had to reschedule my day to work in the Singapore/Hong Kong timezone. This meant waking up three hours earlier, and having lunch at breakfast time in India! The upside to all this was that my day ended earlier and I was able to save time usually spent commuting to the office. This new arrangement brought me closer to my family as we could see each other and dine together all the time.
That said, this flexibility of working-from-home came with its own set of difficulties. At the start, it was tough to put a stop to work — as an engineer, I have the urge to finish up every task in one sitting! To keep myself motivated, I had to draw a clear line between working from home and working ‘for’ home. Scheduling meetings and setting specific tasks in a disciplined manner was also essential in keeping myself engaged while working remotely.
I miss the in-person interactions with my teammates. Before the pandemic, we had so much fun doing leisure activities together — playing badminton, squash, ping pong, basketball, yoga, etc! While we still catch up online via video calls and virtual team bonding activities, I do look forward to the day we can meet in-person again.
What do you like most about YouTrip?
My time at YouTrip coincided with the biggest milestones of my life. In those two-and-a-half years, I dated, got married to my wife, and we were blessed with a baby boy. I know a lot of people who have struggled with long distance-relationships during the pandemic, but the entire YouTrip team has been extremely supportive in making special arrangements for me to work from home remotely when I needed it the most.
Hey! If you’re new here and haven’t gotten your free YouTrip card yet, why not get the ball rolling and use promo code <BLOG5> to sign up and receive a free S$5 in your account!
For more great guides and interviews like this, join our Telegram Channel (@YouTripSG) and subscribe to our free weekly newsletter here or down below!
Related Articles:
Here’s Everything You Need to Know About YouTrip
The Ultimate Overseas Online Shopping Compilation Guide
Life at YouTrip: YouTrip’s Senior Marketing Manager on Watching The Startup Grow Since Day 1