I really wish you all the best. A large part of our team at RedCarpet was hired this way. The biggest thing that it helped was to not depend on signalling from the big name universities in India (the IIT, etc).

We are proud that we did this and is now part of our company culture. The internship program is core to our people ops and everyone in the company participates.

We call it the ROCKS program - https://www.redcarpetup.com/rocks/

Today our success rate is 100% placement - either at RedCarpet or other startups in India. From what i hear, our internship program is now used as signalling by others (without depending on college name branding)

Joke : we internally describe the ROCKS program as "its like Lambda School, except people get paid to learn and get a job". Feel free to steal that ;)