Best Sales Intern At Marico - Rishika Bothra From NMIMS Mumbai Shares Her Experience

STAMP- Summer Training At Marico’s Pace, the 8 weeks summer internship program at Marico, is one of the most intensive yet enriching experiences that one can have. It is a phase where one’s learning curve shoots so high that the very knowledge you gain from this internship is a catalyst of your transformation from a student to a Marico intern. My internship at Marico has been an incredible one, and I’d be thrilled to share my experience and tell everyone I can about how well Marico treats not just its employees, but its interns as well.

From the very beginning, all of us were encouraged to take ownership of our projects and go beyond the brief, think out of the box. The program is very well structured and kept us happily engaged every minute on the job. To ensure that each Summer Trainee got a fair idea of what awaits them, Marico organised a 2-day market visit for us prior to the commencement of our internship. The internship kicked off with a corporate induction where we got the opportunity to interact with Marico’s top honchos who gave us a strategic overview of the company as well as some invaluable insights that were helpful in the beginning of our journey.

I was interning in the Sales function and my project was titled “Channel Development Plan for Open Format Stores in Delhi NCR”. Open format stores being a fast growing medium with maximum shopper interaction, it is a critical channel for Marico. The project allowed me to cover the whole spectrum of elements involved in FMCG sales ranging from consumer insights and in-store execution to merchandising and POS elements. I visited over a hundred stores and interacted with distributors, retailers, salesmen, merchandisers of Marico as well as several other FMCG giants to benchmark Marico’s processes against them. The whole Delhi Team, especially my guide, the Delhi ASM, was extremely supportive and guided me whenever I was stuck.

Reviews and course correction sessions were scheduled at multiple points during the two months, facilitated by our campus anchor. I was given complete autonomy to decide the course that my project would take and was given access to all possible resources to facilitate the process. The recommendations I made based on my primary research and market visits went through an intensive pilot phase and were subsequently approved for implementation. The gruelling final presentation followed by a pre-placement interview taken by the C-level leaders of Marico made me realise how important this project was for Marico and how much of their trust and time they had invested in each of us. The two months at Marico made me fall in love with the company’s culture and I was lucky to be offered the position of Management Trainee soon afterwards.

Another milestone in my Marico journey was the opportunity to compete for the Best Functional Project. Each intern in the Sales domain made a presentation to Marico’s Chief Operating Officer for the same. I was very fortunate to be crowned as a winner in the Sales function.

During the course of my internship at Marico, I was given multiple opportunities to interact with people across verticals and build a deeper understanding of the business. A lot of time and resources were dedicatedly provided to us which also helped me unleash my creativity and help identify my true potential.

Summers at Marico has made me a more confident and self-motivated individual with a belief that it is the little things that make the biggest difference.