Hello all,
I am currently pursuing PGDM 2017-19 from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Sirmaur. I think I am the right person to write about the internship offered at IIM, Sirmaur and this is one story that needs to be read by aspiring candidates.
Though internship offers one a great learning opportunity by working for an organisation for a period of two months, during the course curriculum, I was neutral in opinion about my internship at SAMPARC (Social Action for Manpower Creation), Malvali Centre near Lonavala, Pune. I have a work experience of almost eight years in PSU bank at managerial level. I believed that the work assigned to me there would be monotonous like in PSU banks.
I arrived at SAMPARC Youth Hostel on 31
st March 2018, a day before the reporting date which was the same for most of my batchmates. After a briefing with the Director and the Chief Coordinating Officer, I was assigned to look after the working of credit society under SAMPARC and Self Help Groups under it. I was also assigned to frame the business strategies of the activities carried out by the women in the villages.
Since the credit society was like a mini bank I didn't have any problem in managing it and providing recommendations for it. The main challenge for me lied in developing the business strategies for the SHG women to enable them to market their products. The women in villages have received a lot of training and skill development sessions through SAMPARC to make quality food products, household items etc. However, I found that after taking the required training they did not have any scope to sell the products in the market which led to the wastage of skill development programmes. After thorough research and discussions with the senior management of SAMPARC, we decided to go online for the sale of products manufactured by the SHG women under the brand name of SAMPARC. The brainchild was delivered to me. I worked from scratch in developing the contents of the website to the details of the items to be sold here online. I personally clicked pictures to be displayed on the website. I worked with the software programmer, community co-ordinators, fashion designer and most other staff at SAMPARC to make this happen. We had long meetings and discussions to churn out ideas which would give the desired result. The whole process was thrilling and exciting for me as I was encountering concepts of marketing being practically put to use here. I was in constant touch with the Chief Operating Officer of SAMPARC to keep us on the right track. The d-day came when I showed the exact offline model of the website to the Managing Director of SAMPARC and received a lot of appreciation. I was happy and satisfied that my work would help the rural women too, under the umbrella of SAMPARC, earn their livelihood and self-respect in times to come.
On 31
st June, I packed my bags to yet another much-awaited journey of IIM, Sirmaur - The International Immersion Programme at SDA Bocconi, Milano, Italy.