In a heartening story of triumph in the face of adversity, a Khagaria welder’s son, Vatsalya Chauhan, has bagged a 1.02 crore per annum job at IT giant Microsoft. A final year computer science student at IIT-Kharagpur, Vatsalya was picked by Microsoft during a campus placement drive in December 2015.
“I still remember the interview which began at 4am. The written test, a day before, continued late into the night, and I couldn’t catch a wink,” an elated Vatsalya told Times of India.
In fact, Vatsalya had almost missed the IIT bus.
“I went to Kota in 2009, but, midway through the preparations, I lost interest in engineering. I started reading books on mathematics and physics and wanted to write a book myself. But, when I took my first attempt at JEE in 2011 half-heartedly, I realized I had made a mistake by not studying seriously,” he said, and added that one of his mentors, Vishal Joshi, was instrumental in helping him prepare by staying at Kota for another year.
While Vatsalya had cleared JEE in his first attempt, his rank was not good and it was in his second attempt in 2012 that he cleared JEE with an All India Rank 382.
“That year, I was also the Bihar topper in AIEEE,” says Vatsalya who completed his schooling from government schools in Khagaria and Begusarai.Eldest among six siblings, 21-year-old Vatsalya will join Microsoft in October 2016 as a software engineer at Redmond in the US. His mother Renu Deviis a homemaker