I interned in a company called Xpress Minds which is an Edutainment company and Mr. Kunal Sarvakar is the CEO. The company believes in a motive of knowledge revolution and strive to spread it via quizzes, workshops and game shows, apps and books. The company hired 120 interns from various topnotch B-schools and started with their summer internship program called XUberance. The project was simple yet very complex. Zee Entertainment has Quiz game show called Bournvita Quiz Contest, now they are about to come up with Mind Wars which will have 1 crore students participating from 40,000 schools. The idea was to cover each and every part of this country and make students be a part of this knowledge drive.
So, the internship with Xpress Minds started even before it actually started with a pre-internship assignment of making a database and beat plan for the entire month. We were given a territory and we were asked to make the database with a lot of details for the entire month and then make a beat plan according to the location and pin codes so as to minimize time, effort and expense. Post that, the internship began with a 3-day orientation with a stay at a hotel so that all 120 interns can network and work in a team fashion even if we would be working entirely on roads and there would not be any office scenario at all. The orientation was attended by CEO and Marketing manager of ZEE and they showed us how humungous the show would be!
After our orientation we got to the field and started our journey by cold calls to get appointments but majorly cold visits. It took 2-3 visits to get a meeting with the Principal or even a teacher coordinator. The guard wouldn’t let us in and if by any chance we could get in the receptionist would be least interested even to pass on the message. The standard response used to be “send the proposal by mail, if we would be interested we would revert”. So, even for a free App, thousands of free quizzes and a chance to be on Zee TV, people were not willing to give this exposure to students. It felt bad because in our time we never got such an amazing opportunity. The App was pretty simple and if we would get the schools registered we used to take sessions with students and then answer their queries.
After the first phase, for the second month we were supposed to do online marketing by messaging Admin of Groups of tuitions, coaching and other student-based FB groups to get maximum registrations and I turn, we would give them some publicity at the City Rounds. It went well because these institutions were interested for such kind of publicity.
Mr. Ashish Mishra, our mentor gave us amazing insights about how to tackle difficult situations. We would call him time to time and he would always come up with innovative solutions and yet make us brainstorm about the new problems. The IIFT pass out had such spontaneous thinking and planning that used to amaze us.
My internship experience was amazing and although the interview wasn’t a Stress Interview but they check whether you would fit in the company environment or not with some basic questions. Hard work, commitment and basic common sense is what they look for. It would be a great experience for any marketing enthusiast to work in such a company with a Project of ZEE.