Often, in our life, a small event can lead to a big change. There are stories that brew slowly and eventually lead to a beautiful relationship. Ishtihar Khan doesn't even need a second to recall the date when his journey with ShareChat started as a content creator, June 9, 2016. A date that holds a lot of significance in the life of the engineering graduate turned UX researcher.

Ishtihar spent his childhood in the Ballia Village in Uttar Pradesh before moving to Gurugram for his higher studies. In 2015, Ishtihar was looking for an app on the Play Store which could help him to create content to be shared on WhatsApp. That led him to discover ShareChat. While he did use ShareChat to create posts for Whatsapp for a while, his first post changed the way he perceived the platform. It was a humorous take on a topic that helped him fetch a considerable amount of engagement.

"From there, the motivation came and I started posting regularly," he says, talking about the start of his journey as a creator. Once his interest picked up, so did his curiosity to explore other avenues. And that led him to regularly creating news updates for his profile. As his popularity grew, he was awarded a badge of the 'Top news content creator'. And that's when the unimaginable, well at least according to him, happened. A phone call changed his life.

Given the quality of the content and popularity, Ishtihar was invited to a content creator meet in New Delhi in 2018. It's the support and encouragement he received at the event from Farid Ahsan, the co-founder of ShareChat, that helped him fall in love with the platform. "I still vividly remember how he showered me with appreciation and further motivated me to grow as a creator," he gushes. "If I am being honest, that encounter changed me in many ways, and the small chat pushed me even further to grow.

"Since then, my association became stronger with the team as I would notify them of the bugs on the app and also share suggestions as a user.”

The fact that Ishtihar was so heavily involved in helping the app grow, he was offered an internship as a UX researcher. It wasn’t just a shot in the dark. Ishtihar came armed with ideas to make the product better because he had in depth knowledge of the platform. "The ShareChat team was very supportive in taking that leap of faith for me and I'll never forget that,” he says. “I worked as an intern for five months before joining ShareChat as a full time employee.”

Talking about his experience of working at ShareChat, Ishtihar said, "See, I've always been very inquisitive. Sohil explained the key nuances of the platform to me and that made me more curious about the role. So once I got cracking, I would sit with my colleagues and would just listen to them. They would be taking the interviews and I would just take notes. At the start, it was all about learning on the job and absorbing as much as possible."

For Ishtihar, it's the love that he has received that has made all the hard work worthwhile. "I had always felt part of the ShareChat family even when I was a content creator, so it'll be unfair to say I found myself a family once I joined as an employee," he points out. "What I did realise is that I can also make an impact with my learnings and work and ShareChat gave me a chance to do that."

Ishtihar now, among other things, is building a community of power creators and power consumers. The main aim is to drive suggestions from the users and elevate the overall platform experience.