This article has been published in partnership with Vibha.

For a student pursuing a diploma, an internship can be the bridge between what they learn in a classroom and what they will eventually do at work. But finding the right opportunity is not always straightforward.

Nikhil Kumar, a 21-year-old B.Tech CSE student from Punjab, had come across internships that required candidates to hold a bachelor’s degree or pay fees to gain experience. After completing his diploma in 2025, he chose to pursue a bachelor’s degree. The experience made him think about the barriers other diploma students might face. 

At Government Polytechnic College, Talwara, Nikhil was already putting his coding skills to use. Alongside his faculty mentor, Sukeeratpal Singh, he was developing a college management system to simplify administrative work.

When Vibha’s Programme Management Unit (PMU) learnt about the project, it saw an opportunity to build on it. The team was working on a semester-long internship programme in which students would spend their final semester working in industry rather than attending regular theory classes. Together, they adapted the system to help colleges monitor students’ progress throughout this practical training.

The project became Place Intern, a portal that brings student internship records, faculty visits and progress reports together.

“I was also curious whether whatever I was building would be used in the real world,” Nikhil says.

The project gave him the chance to find out. With guidance from his faculty mentor, Sukeeratpal Singh, and support from Vibha’s (PMU), which works with Punjab’s technical education department, Nikhil helped develop his college’s internship management system into a tool that could be used by other institutions. 

How a college project found a purpose beyond campus

At Government Polytechnic College, Talwara, Singh had been encouraging students to explore technology beyond their regular coursework. In 2023, he started a student club where interested students could spend additional time learning, experimenting, and helping one another.

Nikhil stood out for his willingness to take on work independently. “He was always the one who finished the work first,” Singh recalls.

The two began working on a college management system that could make certain administrative processes easier to handle. They planned its features, decided how it would work and tested it over several weeks.

The project caught the attention of Vibha’s PMU when team member Abhay Vashisht visited the college. The team was working on the policy and programme design for a semester-long internship initiative for students in technical education. 

As they considered how the programme would work on the ground, they began identifying possible implementation challenges, including how colleges could monitor students throughout their internships.

Nikhil’s understanding of the college environment, combined with the PMU’s inputs on the internship programme, helped shape the portal into a tool that could support its implementation.

Nikhil built the parts that store and manage information, tested the portal, put it online and kept it running. Singh helped him understand the college workflows the system needed to support, while the PMU team shared the programme requirements, developed an initial........

© The Better India