I did my BCA at Dr. Virendra Swarup Institute of Computer Studies in Kanpur, not at an IIT. By the end of it I was CTO of an AI-first studio, had won three hackathons — two of them at IIT Roorkee and CSJMU — and had shipped five production AI apps. None of that was on the syllabus. Here is the path as I would describe it to a BCA student today, without the motivational gloss.

Know the gaps

A BCA syllabus gives you programming fundamentals, databases and a project. It usually does not give you Python at production depth, deployment, version control as a habit, or anything current in AI. Those are the gaps; they are all fillable outside class, and most of them in a semester.

Fill them with projects, in order

  1. A deployed web app with a database — the floor.
  2. A RAG project with evaluation numbers over something local: your college's documents, a shop's catalogue.
  3. One fine-tuning or vision project on free hardware.
  4. One of them taken to real users.

That is the GenAI engineer roadmap, and it does not care which college you attend.

Where the opportunities actually are

  • Hackathons at bigger institutes are open to everyone. Krishi Gyan won Changethon at IIT Roorkee as a team from a BCA college.
  • Local communities — MeetKats in Kanpur ran BYTEBATTLE, which Annapurna won. Every city has one.
  • Remote roles and startups judge the repository, not the campus; see getting a remote GenAI role from a tier-2 city.
  • Freelance and client work — SCULT INDIA started as three students shipping paid products.

What the college does give you

Time, a peer group and a stage. TechVerse Enclave started as a few students at VSICS helping each other build; the college gave us a seminar hall for the AI Mentorship Session and the induction. Use the institution for what it is good at — community and rooms — and the internet for the rest.

The honest part

Campus placements at a non-IIT college will offer fewer AI roles. That is a reason to build a visible portfolio early, not a reason to give up on the field. The recruiters who found me found projects and posts, not a college name.

— Pranjul Rathour, GenAI Engineer from Kanpur, India. Open to GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at any campus: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com.