My Earning Journey: From Cashew Nuts to My First Income

It Started With Cashew Nuts

If I really try to remember where my earning story started, I would probably say it started when I was way too young to even understand what earning money meant. Probably 6 or 7 or even before.

Basically, during summer vacations, my cousins and I used to collect raw cashew nuts from the cashew trees. The cashew nut is attached outside the cashew fruit, so we’d collect the nuts and then sell them.

If the fruit had fallen and gone bad, we’d throw it away and collect the nut. If the fruit was still good, we could eat it too.

Sometimes we’d pluck them from the tree, but that was honestly quite difficult as a kid.

We used to make a competition out of it too. We’d take one big vessel each, collect everything in it and then count how many each of us had collected.

And it was actually hard work because it was summer, it was very hot, we were around the forest and there were insects and everything.

Once we sold the cashews, we’d divide the money. We’d keep some and use some to buy firecrackers for Vishu, and sometimes my oldest cousin brother would get us sip-ups or something.

Pretty sure since the older kids did the money division, he has done some jugaad.

So that’s probably my oldest memory of actually doing something, putting in manual labour and getting money in return.

The Kid Who Collected Coins

Then there was this phase where I was a slightly calculative kid. Maybe you can call it smart, I don’t know.

Around that time, the ₹5 gold-coloured coins and ₹10 coins had started coming into circulation, and I was already the kind of kid who collected random things and put them into boxes.

So I decided I was going to collect these coins too.

Initially it was just a collection. Whenever someone got one, I’d ask them for it. I vaguely remember sometimes giving my mom a 10 rupee note and asking for the coin instead.

My grandmother was much more useful for this collection because whenever she got one, she’d just keep it aside for me. So whenever I went to her house or she came to our house in Kochi, she’d bring the coins for me.

Eventually I had a proper collection, and I still have those two piggybank-like boxes. One is completely filled and the other one is still there.

I also had my own little payment system for chores. My mom would ask me to go buy something, and if there was change, especially one or two rupees, I’d take it and tell her, “This is my payment for doing the chore.” So technically, I was negotiating my compensation before I even knew what compensation was.

I also used to win competitions and get prize money. People were quite happy to give me money because I was always donating it or putting it towards charity, so I think that also encouraged this whole behaviour of me collecting money, winning things and saving it.

I am not trying to put on a Mother Theresa face, but I genuinely don’t remember using any of those money for myself. I might have actually been selfishly enjoying the compliments or praise for donating it to charity.

Lol.

College and My First Proper Earning

Anyway, then I got to college, and that’s when I started thinking, okay, I can’t keep asking my parents for money.

I need to figure out another way to make money.

This was around 2019, and honestly, I didn’t even know what freelancing was at that point.

I started hunting for internships through Internshala and got my first one in 2020, which was an engineering content development internship for an EdTech Startup. I don’t remember the exact stipend now, I need to check my bank account and old emails, but I think it was around ₹1,500.

That was my first proper professional earning.

I was also very active in college and was part of a lot of communities, and that became a huge source of opportunities for me. My seniors and alumni started knowing me and the kind of work I could do, and they would recommend me to their alumni who were starting startups or needed interns for small projects.

I worked with a meat-based startup at one point, which is particularly funny because I am a vegetarian. I was literally a vegetarian writing copy for a meat-based startup. I was working on copy for their app and it was a pretty interesting experience.

I also got another internship through a foundation I was already part of.

One of the founders was working at an event company and recommended me for an internship there. I applied with a friend, we both got selected, and we worked there for quite a bit.

We got to work on actual events and even got to go to a few concerts, so that was another completely different experience.

Then, in my final year, again through my seniors, I got an opportunity to apply for GrowthX for a product and content role, which eventually converted into my first full-time job.

Communities Became a Huge Part of My Journey

Looking back, I think communities were one of the biggest reasons I got opportunities in college.

Someone knew me, they knew what I could do, and then when they or someone they knew needed help, they thought of me. And college is actually the best time to do this because you have the time to have multiple things going on.

You can do an internship, join a community, work with a startup, volunteer somewhere, participate in a hackathon, build something with your friends and then do something completely random the next week.

Honestly, if I could go back, I would probably do many more internships and part-time jobs.

I was always doing random things and I don’t regret that at all.

Once I joined my first full-time job, though, I completely stopped. For one whole year, I was focused only on my job.

I wasn’t doing side projects and I wasn’t really trying to make money outside of my salary.

Then I quit my job and took a career break, and that was when I properly started exploring different ways of making money again.

Making Money While Travelling

By then, I had around one year of experience at a fast-growing startup in product and content, and I had also become a LinkedIn Top Voice.

So I started getting some ghostwriting opportunities through LinkedIn.

I was also travelling during my career break, and travelling became another really interesting way of finding opportunities. I’d meet people, talk to them and ask what they were working on.

Sometimes they needed help with social media or content, and sometimes the exchange wasn’t even money. I’d do some work and get a free stay or something else in return.

I think when you’re travelling, especially if you’re staying in hostels and meeting a lot of people, you just meet so many people who are building things.

You just have to be curious enough to ask, “What are you working on?”

If someone is building a product and needs marketing, maybe you can help them plan the marketing strategy.

If someone is building a website and needs copies, maybe you can help with that.

If someone is starting a hostel or travel company and needs community growth, you can help build the community or host activities.

These were things I started noticing while travelling.

The whole point of my career break was to travel, so I didn’t want to take up five different jobs and basically recreate a full-time job.

At one point I actually had multiple part-time opportunities, and I had to reject some of them because I wanted the travel to remain the main thing.

I picked one, and the idea was to fund parts of my travel through the work I was doing.

I actually managed to replace a lot of my travel spending this way, so I didn’t have to completely eat into my savings.

Volunteering Can Also Create Opportunities

Another thing I think can help you find opportunities is volunteering.

I’m not saying you should volunteer somewhere expecting them to give you a job or pay you later.

That’s not the point.

But when you volunteer, people get to see the kind of work you produce, the quality of your work and how you work with people.

Maybe the next time they have a project, instead of asking you to volunteer, they might come back and say, okay, this time we’d actually like to pay you.

So volunteering can become one source of future part-time opportunities.

The Other Things I Tried

There were also a bunch of smaller things I tried along the way.

There was an app where you could take surveys and earn money in dollars which was fancy when you are just 20, and I also tried things like Google Rewards.

These things aren’t necessarily going to make you a lot of money, but when you’re starting out, even figuring out how these tiny amounts of money can come into your account is interesting.

I also tried trading.

It didn’t really work for me.

I wouldn’t say I lost a huge amount of money, but I understood that it wasn’t something I wanted to pursue.

Then I started learning about SIPs, mutual funds and investing, and realised that maybe that made more sense for me.

As an adult, you also need to learn what to do with the money you’re making, not just how to make it.

Not Everything Worked

And then there were all the things I tried that didn’t really work.

I had my own for-profit startup in college.

We were incubated through the IEDC cell in their pre-incubation program, worked on the idea seriously, participated in multiple hackathons, made it into the top teams a few times and even won the Hult Prize in our campus to represent the regionals.

We started with a team of three and eventually worked with a bigger team too.

We had to pivot the business idea along the way, and there was a point where we thought we could potentially convert it into customers or maybe even sell the company if we got an opportunity to be acquired.

But it didn’t work out and eventually we had to drop it.

Separately, I was also part of a completely different nonprofit project through the Millennium Fellowship.

That had nothing to do with the startup or the hackathons.

We were a different team, and the whole focus there was on going beyond textbook education, with our work centred around quality education and SDG 4.

That also eventually came to an end, but it was a completely different kind of project and experience.

So when I look back, there were all these different attempts happening at different points, some for money, some for learning, some because I genuinely wanted to build something, and some just because I wanted to see what would happen.

Freelancing and Building a Personal Brand

My original plan when I joined my current full-time job at Polygnan was actually to continue freelancing on the side.

I thought I’d take a small break until I settled into the new job and then get back to it.

That break became much longer than I expected, and eventually I completely stopped freelancing.

And honestly, it isn’t as easy to get back into it now either.

In 2024, I felt like having a good LinkedIn profile and a portfolio where you could show your previous work was enough to get freelancing opportunities.

I wasn’t even using Upwork, Fiverr or any of those platforms.

I mostly found work through LinkedIn, Wellfound, personal connections and communities I was already part of.

Writing and ghostwriting were also things that were working for me at that point.

I don’t know if the same thing will work in exactly the same way in 2026.

There are more people doing it and more people competing for the same opportunities.

But I still think the basic principle is the same.

You need to have something you’re good at, you need to actually do the work, and you need to be able to show people what you’ve done.

Once you have some professional experience and a personal brand or portfolio that shows the kind of outcomes you can produce, it becomes much easier for people to trust that you can actually help them.

The EYFI Challenge Has Given Me That Itch Again

And now, after spending quite a long time focusing only on my full-time job, I think I’m starting to get that itch again.

The EYFI challenge has actually reminded me that I like doing things on the side.

I like trying something and figuring out, okay, can I actually make money from this?

Maybe I’ll get back into freelancing, maybe I’ll build something, maybe I’ll try something completely random again.

Maybe five years from now, I’ll have another story about what I did while having a full-time job.

Because when I look at my earning journey, it has never really been one big breakthrough.

It’s been a collection of small attempts.

Some things made money, some didn’t.

Some gave me experience, some gave me connections and some just gave me funny stories.

But all of them taught me something.

Your First Rupee Matters

And I think that’s why earning your first rupee matters so much.

It isn’t really about the amount.

Whether you’re a kid, a college student, a teenager or an adult, there is something different about money that you know you earned yourself.

The first ₹1,500 from an internship doesn’t feel like a lot of money now, and neither does the ₹1 or ₹2 I used to take from my mom’s change, but at that time they meant something because it was money that came from something I did.

It gives you a certain kind of confidence.

Not the confidence that everything you try is going to work, because clearly I’ve tried enough things that didn’t.

It’s the confidence that if something doesn’t work, you can figure something else out.

So to everyone doing the EYFI challenge, I genuinely hope you try things.

Try something small, try something weird, try something that you don’t know how to do yet.

Your first earning doesn’t have to be impressive.

It doesn’t have to be ₹10,000 or ₹1 lakh.

It can literally be ₹1.

Because sometimes that first rupee isn’t really about the money.

It’s the moment you realise, “Oh, I can actually make money myself.”

And once you know that, I think you carry that confidence with you for a very, very long time.