From Fintech to Farm Tech: Rajendra’s 1st year at Proshore

Rajendra Shrestha is a recent graduate of Nepal College of Information Technology (NCIT), with a Bachelor of Engineering in Software Engineering. He’s also approaching his first full year as a mobile app developer at Proshore. 

For Rajendra – who’s also currently completing a master’s degree in computer engineering – part of Proshore’s appeal is the flexible working arrangements. This means he can study and work in software development at the same time. 

Continuing our ‘employee stories’ series, we spoke to Rajendra about his experience of working for Proshore, what he’s enjoyed most, and where he would like to take his career next. 

What did you do before Proshore?

Since I was young, I’ve had a passion for mobile development. I built apps and tried coding many things for my phone. 

In mobile app development, technology moves quickly! When I first started training, the main programming language was Java. Today, I mainly work in Flutter – the open-source UI kit created by Google for cross-platform applications. 

The mobile app development sector has always fascinated me. Before joining Proshore, I worked for a fintech company for almost three years. They provided banking solutions through mobile apps, with a product aimed at banking corporations within Nepal. 

What led you to Proshore?

I’d actually been following Proshore for a long time. A friend from college, who worked for the company, recommended it to me. They enjoyed working as part of the team. Now approaching my first year with the company, so do I!

What really appealed to me about joining Proshore was working on international projects, and learning how to handle them. I was also keen to learn how to develop software iteratively to keep improving products.     

Where will your skills and experience take you next?

Right now, I’m focussed on two things: finishing my master’s degree and honing my skills as a mobile app developer. 

However, in the future, I would like to move sideways and learn other aspects of software development. That’s because as developers, we cannot be complete with only one skill set. We need backend and frontend knowledge, especially if further down the line we want to become full-stack developers. 

In terms of my next steps, eCommerce is everywhere right now. So what I’d most like to do is something new. I’m really interested in the possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). At college, I did a project which involved ML, where I had to train the modules and integrate them into an app. This really sparked my interest.  

As a developer, I’d like to become more independent and self-reliant, which will come as my knowledge and experience grow. I’d also like to develop my knowledge of other programming languages, and with this knowledge, heighten my project management skills. Because Proshore works on so many different types of projects, opportunities are certain to come up. In the future, I’d also like to mentor junior developers. 

What do you enjoy most about Proshore?

There are so many answers to this question! The flexible working arrangements mean I can study and work at the same time. The learning environment here is also very positive; my teammates are very helpful. I guess you could say that it’s been a very fruitful environment to both learn and work!

There are opportunities to learn many things around software development. That’s because Proshore has many different projects, in a range of programming languages, with many international partners. As a team, we also have the opportunity to take part in social activities, such as football. 

Right now, most of Nepal’s economy is agricultural. So I’ve really enjoyed working on a poultry app. Basically, it enables farmers to optimize food production by surveying their flock and recording the features of individual hens. The data collected is used to help improve their farming techniques. I like the way it combines a traditional occupation with cutting-edge tech.

So far, what’s been most challenging about your role?

We have such a helpful team that so far anything I’ve found challenging has been easily overcome. I also think anything can be solved – or I can Google it! One area that I have found tricky is localization. That’s when an app needs to integrate multiple languages. 

Traditionally, we put different languages side by side within the frontend of an app. To overcome this, I’ve engineered a piece of code that enables different languages to be handled in the backend of the app and shown in the frontend. Now, we don’t need to manually enter different languages. This was a huge challenge for me, but highly rewarding.   

If you could code any piece of software, what would it be and why?

I’ve dreamed of designing an app that helps farmers to grow plants. It would give instructions on planting and caring for different kinds of plants to optimize their growth and yield.