A Remarkable Summer At Becton Dickinson - Ayesha Siddiqua, XIMB

1st April 2019 - My first foray to the great North.

With hope in my eyes and butterflies in my stomach, I landed in Gurgaon - India's millennium city to set sail on my internship journey with Becton Dickinson, a.k.a BD.

My journey at BD began with a 2-day Orientation program, where the business directors of BD briefed us about the organisation, its offerings and the business vertical they led. These sessions gave me an opportunity to not only interact with the top brass of BD but also to network with my fellow summer interns. At the close of the orientation, we were assigned a project in a particular business vertical.

My internship project was to market the services and application support verticals of BD- Biosciences division under the guidance of senior marketing leader, Mr.Uday Kumar Mishra. While product marketing seems to be the toast of the town, I was thrilled to practise and work on the exciting area of service marketing.

Under the tutelage of Uday Sir, I not only learned the approach to service marketing but the approach to tackle any task in life. He explained to me how as millennials we impatiently run towards the finish line grabbing whatever supplies we get. Only to realise midway that we have forgotten an important supply leading us back to the starting point. He thus emphasized spending one-third of the task time studying & planning it.

Following the same approach, I planned my project which involved a parallel study of external factors: the voice of the customer and internal factors: inter-departmental coordination to pitch BD Biosciences' services as value differentiators. Market research involving the project took me to different cities to record customer's feedback;  for someone who hasn't travelled much, this came like a welcome breeze.

Eight weeks of internship just went by in a whizz leading me to the day of final review. It seemed like a smooth sailing thanks to my mentor who always encouraged me to think out of the box, to be prepared for every possibility and who supported me and guided me through every crest and trough of my internship tenure.

Leaving the city of Gurgaon, I only had 2 emotions running through my mind, gratitude for everyone at BD who encouraged me & supported me and happiness for heading back home in time for Eid.

Ayesha Siddiqua
Class of 2020
Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar