BCA graduate, 21M — leaving my first IT job to move toward Cloud/Infrastructure. Is my plan realistic ?

I'm a 21-year-old BCA graduate (2025) from India, and I need some honest career advice from people working in IT.

I joined a local pharmaceutical company in August 2026 as an IT Support Apprentice. I expected the role to give me experience with networking, troubleshooting, systems, infrastructure, etc.

However, immediately after I joined, both senior IT employees resigned, which gave me a much clearer picture of the actual job.

I've realized that roughly 40% of the work is actual IT support/networking/troubleshooting, while a significant portion involves pharma tenders, documentation, procurement/vendor-related work and similar responsibilities.

That's not the direction I want my career to take.

There is also a difficult management environment, but that's not the main reason I'm considering leaving. My bigger concern is that the role itself isn't helping me move toward the technical career I actually want.

I'm currently thinking about resigning and spending the next 6–12 months building proper technical skills rather than immediately jumping into another random entry-level job.

My target areas are:

Linux → Networking → System Administration → Cloud → eventually DevOps

I'm particularly interested in AWS/Azure, Linux administration, networking, cloud infrastructure and technical support. I'm not against coding, but I don't want my career to revolve around software development.

The problem is that I already have a BCA but relatively little professional experience, and I'm aware that taking another gap after leaving my first job could hurt my resume.

So I'm trying to figure out whether my thinking is flawed.

What I'm currently considering learning:

Linux fundamentals + administration

Networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VLANs, routing, NAT, VPNs, etc.)

Bash/Python scripting

Git/GitHub

AWS fundamentals

EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, CloudWatch, Load Balancers, etc.

Basic Docker

Infrastructure as Code / Terraform

Basic CI/CD

Some Windows Server/Active Directory knowledge

And instead of only collecting certifications, I'd build practical projects/labs and document them on GitHub.

My questions:

1. Is this career path realistic for a BCA graduate with limited experience?

2. Would it be smarter to get another IT support/sysadmin/networking job first and move into cloud later, rather than trying for junior cloud roles directly?

3. If I have 6–12 months available, what should I actually prioritize?

4. Which skills are genuinely used in entry-level cloud/infrastructure jobs in India, and which ones are mostly resume keywords?

5. What projects/labs would make you take a fresher's cloud/infrastructure resume seriously?

6. How damaging is a 6–12 month gap if I can demonstrate substantial learning/projects during that period?

I'd especially appreciate answers from people currently working in cloud engineering, DevOps, sysadmin, networking, SRE or infrastructure in India.

Please be blunt. If my plan is unrealistic or I'm trying to skip necessary steps, I'd rather hear that now than waste another year.