A summer internship lets an individual explore the real-life challenges that we learn during our MBA programme. The engagement with industry during our internship also helps us in learning about different roles across divisions of management. In this series of ‘MBA Internship Experience 2019’, it brings experiences of students of Top b-schools, who learned strategies and applied theories to successfully complete their internship projects in the year 2019.
An MBA college has diversified profiles ranging from students having no hands-on experience to students who have good three to four years of experience; the ones with experience see internship as a respite, getting away from the haunting textbooks they had left behind years back and the ones with no/little hands-on experience take it as a challenge, full of confidence and excitement to witness the professional world.
Once we enter a B-school, we taste, smell and feel competition. Everyone tries to showcase their talent with an intention to improve their profiles because at the end it all boils down to who made it through those grilling interviews (willingly or unwillingly) where you have to slash throats of friends and foe to become an equal competitor.
Prior my MBA I worked with Cognizant in the Testing domain and then moved on to L&T Technology Services in the Design and Analysis sector. Therefore, having a work experience of 3 years made me realize that there is a plethora of content to be known and technical is only an aspect in an organisation, thus intriguing me to pursue an MBA.
I am an MBA student of NMIMS Bangalore, batch of 2018-2020, completed my internship in the Sales department of Kalpataru Limited. Being a graduate in Mechanical Engineering, during my internship worked on Market Analysis and understanding Consumer Behaviour in Real Estate.
Six months into the program and with no offer letter in hand, a senior suggested trying something different, something which adds value to my profile, and something which shows that I can adapt to changes and work in diversified profiles. That’s when I applied to one of the biggest Real Estate “Kalpataru”.
Entering one of the biggest Real Estate developer might give goosebumps to many, I was no exception, but the company was surely an exceptional case. The induction lasted for just 40-45 minutes which dealt with just an overview and dos and don’ts in the organization. Within an hour I was doing a market analysis and realized how pricing is set to benefit customer by providing value products. The most astonishing part of my work that I realized in the initial 2-3 weeks was that people were not aware about the brand apart from few metropolitan cities such as Mumbai, Pune etc as the company believes in “Below the Line” marketing strategies. Due to this, the company saves an enormous amount of money through the marketing department.
Mumbai, being the financial capital of the country has got the purchasing power but is it well equipped with facilities which can be used to stay or invest in with such a high price? Even if these facilities are available, can it be accessible to the luxury products only or can be accommodated for normal pricing range as well? Has Rera Act or demonetisation made any drastic impact to such a well renowned Real Estate developer? With many such questions in my mind, I laid down a plan to study the market in 4 phases to determine who and what kind of customers can be the potential buyers for the brand.
The 4 Phases: – 1. Competitor Analysis (Studying the product range and price range, the competitors have in the surrounding area) 2. Questionnaire (Customer perception about the price and brands they prefer with different variables such as amenities preferred, location, price, variants such as 3bhk, 3.5bhk, etc) 3. Historical Data Analysis (To forecast) 4. Closing Team (convincing customers)
1st phase: - the task was to find product range and its prices in respective zones (East, West). This might look easy and one would assume such information can be asked straight forward to the competitors, but I was in Mumbai, a place which teaches an individual business, which teaches how to shield your business secrets and which teaches nothing comes free of cost and so in the name of market research I was kicked out of many developers. The only trick I could pull out was: – acting as a customer myself with a huge financial background and found out the product and price range of many competing developers.
2nd phase: - The requirement was to generate customer responses, to find out what kind of products do they look for and what is the range they prefer. It also included many variables like brand loyalty, brand ambassador associations, amenities, quality etc. This type of information was required to cross-check if the company is selling the right type of product in the market.
3rd phase: - Historical Data Analysis helped to forecast demand, as to see which variant are the customers preferring and accordingly development of projects can be done. Preferably 10% more developments are done as compared to the last year. In case if any year there is some slack, then moving average method is taken into consideration for the last five years data and then 10% is increased. When I analyzed the stock of luxury segment I found that there is a lot of inventory pending and the reason behind it was demonetisation, which had a very low probability of being converted into sales.
The final phase: - demanded me to relate what I had found in the initial 3 phases to what the company had sold in a specific time period and the technology used. I had to assist the senior management team by interacting with customers coming to the site and explaining the product by making the customers realize as to why they should build a collaboration with Kalpataru.
“Honesty is the best policy” and this is what it was required for me to crack the interview. Keeping things simple and explaining my interest in learning in such a domain in an articulated manner helped me clear the interview. Concentrating on fundamentals is important because it is the fundamentals which act as a key during adverse situations and helps an individual come up with the right solution, be it in professional or rather personal life.
My mentors have highly experienced salesperson from retail and real estate backgrounds who made sure that I learn and become comfortable with sales within the first week of my internship and move out confidently for my research work. In addition they transferred operational knowledge such as the technological aspect which differs Kalpataru from other developers and also made us realize that Kalpataru as a brand always focuses on three main aspects before developing any project i.e air, light and space, which is primarily their USP, thereby helping me understand the in-depth functioning of the Real Estate Sector.