MBA makes you experience extreme seasons, sometimes too happy, sometimes too sad, sometimes celebrations and sometimes tension. The tensed atmosphere had set in since the summer internship placement season for PGDM 09 batch had begun. Suited up in formals, every day, we used to go and face the companies coming to the campus to hire interns, with the hope of cracking the interview of our dream companies. Every evening when the results used to come out, there were some very happy faces and some dreams were shattered. But we were expected not to lose hope and keep on trying until we succeed. I had to also go through a similar journey. I had faced four interviews already, got rejected and had started to lose hope when another opportunity knocked on my door. My trimester exams were on and I was informed that my interview is scheduled the following day at 3 pm for the company, iSticker Pvt. Ltd. I was a bit apprehensive about the interview since I also had my Economics exam one day later. Nevertheless, I was ready to face it and since I had applied for a marketing and sales intern role, I decided to brush up my marketing concepts of Trimester 1 and 2. I also went through the company's website, trying to thoroughly understand their business and their expectations from me and what I could offer them. The next day, I reached my college campus, though I was feeling quite nervous, I tried to calm myself down and give my 100 percent. The interview began at 3 pm sharp and it was a Skype interview. My interviewer was Mr. Chetan Singh, who is also the CEO of the company. My interview was more a conversational one rather than a one-sided, stress interview. I was asked a few basic marketing concepts and how do you apply it in real-life situations and also a few questions about my prior work experience. After my interview, Mr. Singh also told me about himself and how he set up the business. It was a unique gesture that impressed me. The interview went quite well and I rated it to be the best so far, hoping to crack it and get through. After 2 days, the results were declared and I was extremely happy to get selected for the role. My internship was to begin on 1st April 2019 and the location was Gurgaon. I was looking forward to it and was hoping for a great learning experience.
Days passed and finally, my first day of internship was here. I reported at 8 am to my mentor, who also was my interviewer, Mr. Singh and he gave me a very warm welcome. I was introduced to the rest of the team post that. I was then informed about the agenda of the day where I had to attend a briefing session about my work.
In the session, my mentor, also an architect by profession, explained about the key features of the AEC industry over the years and how he faced problems in his tenure as an architect and consequently came up with this innovation which facilitates the communication between stakeholders of the project and makes project execution fast and manageable. In the following days, I prepared sales pitches for architects and sellers, arranged meetings and explained to them the benefits of using iSticker for their business and gave a demonstration on how to use the platform. Brainstorming sessions were conducted to come up with innovative marketing ideas to promote the platform among the existing user base as well as the targeted new users. This also included putting forth ideas to make the website and mobile application of iSticker more interactive and user- friendly. In the second month, I conducted extensive market research which aimed at the expansion of the firm internationally as well as in unexplored parts of India. The major learnings from the above activities were gaining knowledge about the AEC industry ,understanding the business model of iSticker, the deliverables it is offering and how it is helping the stakeholders of the AEC industry to smoothly execute their projects, getting insights about the demands and thought process of clients and what they actually want from a product or service they buy. I also got an experience of marketing and advertising products and dealing with clients, explored many marketing strategies that were not mainstream and could give iSticker an edge over others and ways in which it could be projected to the target audience and a 360-degree overview of the international AEC market and the avenues of expansion, through the secondary market research.
Since I had prior work experience as a tester, I also offered additional help to the firm by testing its online website for defects and reported them so that it had minimum bugs when a client used it.
Apart from this, a special mention to my mentor who left no stone unturned to ensure that I take away maximum out of these two months of internship. He guided me like a teacher and was ready to help me wherever I got stuck. Interactive sessions with the mentor were conducted every week where he gave insights about the corporate world, how to run a business, how to be unique in a crowd of hundreds and how to be successful in life. The key takeaways from the sessions mentioned above were basics of entrepreneurship through personal examples, how to dream big and achieve it, how to have a full-proof plan for your life, the key to success through personal life story and how to develop a never giving up attitude. I was really lucky to have such a mentor who guided me so well.
Overall, it was a great learning experience with an interactive environment and I hope I can apply these learnings at various points in my life.
