The Infosys InStep internship - the best internship in the world?

U of A students have many opportunities available to them around the world, and thanks to the university’s growing partnership with Infosys, one of India’s largest IT companies, “best internship in the world” can be added to that list. The program is only available to a select few Canadian universities besides the U of A, including Mcgill, the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto. 

In addition to compensation and travel subsidies, the InStep internship program at Infosys offers students a hands-on opportunity to work on cutting-edge research projects at the Infosys campus in Bengaluru, as well as an unparalleled chance to get to know a bit more about modern India. In order to learn more about what U of A students can expect from the InStep internship, I took a moment to chat with a recent participant from our university - Austin, a final-year Engineering Physics student.

“When I saw that there was this opportunity to go to India, I just had to go,” says Austin about his choice to apply for the InStep program. As the second most populous and seventh-largest country in the world, with almost 450 recognized languages, India is noted for its diversity of landscapes and cultures. “You saw quite a bit of the country, which was awesome,” Austin said; “there were about 50-60 of us interns, and most weekends you’d get a few friends together and travel to another city.” Speaking of the other interns, it was a truly global cohort from a number of leading universities, asking Austin about this: “I was the only Canadian. Many came from the states, from universities like Purdue, Columbia, MIT, though there were many from France, UK, Switzerland, and even Chile.”

Befitting Infosys’ position as a leading global tech company, the InStep interns were offered work opportunities in a variety of areas. Austin was placed on a machine learning project: “Mine was specifically geared towards forecasting energy consumption. But some of the other students were doing more work in quantum computing, which also sounded really cool.” The company assigned each student a mentor - a senior, experienced employee who would help guide them during their time at Infosys. Austin found this quite similar to the working environment he knew from a co-op placement here in Canada; “I had my team, we would morning stand up, talk about what we're going to be doing for the day, and what we accomplished yesterday. This helped everyone stay on track.”

The Infosys campus in Bengaluru is spread across over 80 acres and can rival some of the better-known tech campuses in California. Austin had a few trepidations driving through Bengaluru and seeing the population density. “It's so different from Canada” but when he arrived on the Infosys campus all doubts disappeared. “When I saw [the campus] I was like, this is amazing. At that point, I realized that I was going to be fine and the internship was gonna be great.” The intern’s dorms included housekeeping staff, and the cafeterias offered a wide range of foods. “I think I was quite open to trying foods, and maybe a bit too often at times. I tried some street food, which I probably shouldn't have. But the food on campus was great, and with a lot of variety - They even offered Western foods.” There were even physicians available on the campus for Infosys staff, and they helped out the interns with their health needs. Austin recalls: “I remember I got a pretty bad bug bite. So there were doctors on campus who took care of us, and were really quite skilled. It was of course free for the interns at Infosys.”

An unexpected highlight of the internship was the focus Infosys had on giving their interns a positive impression of India and introducing them to the innovation and business climate of the rapidly developing nation. Austin was impressed. “We'd meet some of the most prominent people in India. We were meeting, the Jeff Bezos is of India, which makes you take a step back and say ‘holy moly, wow!’” 

The commitment came all the way from Infosys leadership; during an event with N. R. Narayana Murthy, the billionaire company founder and one of India’s most respected tycoons, he told the interns that he knew some of them would become industry leaders in their own countries, and he hoped that the experience at Infosys would not just give them a positive impression of his company, but that they’d have a life-long soft spot for India.