A college student, trying to turn a video-editing hobby into an income, had been applying to internships on a jobs board. One listing — a video-editing internship, ₹5,000 a month for six months — replied. The “founder” messaged on WhatsApp and set up a Google Meet, which they happened to reschedule once before it went ahead.
On the call, the founder asked for his best sample work. He sent two pieces. The founder called them “pretty basic edits” — then framed the criticism as a favour: “since you have no professional working experience we still want to give you a chance in our startup.” He was told to contact the company’s “CMO,” who would set him a test assignment and review his skills further.
The CMO sent the assignment. But the student had been burned before by employers who advertised one stipend and paid a fraction of it, or made it entirely performance-based, so — wanting at least a small fixed figure confirmed — he asked the founder directly about the ₹5,000.
The reply downgraded him. His confidence, he wrote, was shaken.
Curious, he looked the company up on Instagram: about twenty posts, mostly AI-generated filler, and roughly fifty followers — though they had described themselves to him as a startup of around forty-five employees. He asked whether this was simply normal practice, and whether he had been wrong to ask about the pay at all.