Just like any other MBA student majoring in Finance I too aspired for working with a great financial firm honing my skill set and putting my knowledge to test. Also, this experience would have given me the clarity if finance was my cup of tea. After having the taste of one field of finance i.e. Audit during my prior work experience, I wanted to explore other core areas of finance. This spurred me to start my preparation for my Summer Internship Programme (SIP). However, it didn’t take very long for really to hit me; that the kind of preparation one needs to crack a technical round isn’t a cake walk.
The first and the foremost thing I did was study various articles related to finance basics. This also included brushing up my basic of accounting and economics. The first recruiter who came to our campus was TATA Capital. To my distress I didn’t get selected for it. After a thorough analysis of what went wrong, I started my preparation for more interviews to come. It was not an easy task at hand. Being completed one year of MBA I thought of proceeding in a strategic manner. So, I listed three criteria on basis of which I would scrutinize the opportunities coming my way. They were – Role offered, Package given, and last but not the least Location. Personally, the role offered had much more importance to me as compared to any other deciding factor. One thing I always kept in mind was that these 2 months will help me gain a deeper knowledge in various fields and this could be one of the greatest opportunities coming my way.
Finally, it happened a start-up
PAY1 came to our college for hiring. The best thing about the company was that the role offered was nothing specific, instead they told us that the projects would be allocated as per our interests. First round of interview was taken telephonically by the HR wherein she inquired about the basic requirements such as, what is the background, if there is any prior experience, if yes then how much and where, how comfortable are you in moving to Bombay for internship etc. Second round of interview was also telephonic, and was taken by the CFO Mr. Abhinav Mathur himself. This was a bit of technical round wherein different questions were asked to test the basic knowledge about the field and the company. And yes! I got selected.
After we got selected, we were asked to prepare a presentation on FinTech Start-ups operating in India and which would be discussed at a later stage.
I was finally set to start my amazing two-month experience! The very first day of our internship we had a formal orientation and we were sent to our respective departments. After a formal introduction with our mentor, the CFO himself, he discussed the presentations that we sent him after the recruitment procedure. Then he got talking to us regarding our areas of interest so that he could accordingly align the projects. Since, I wanted to explore more about the core areas of finance such as Valuation and Projections of the company, I was handed over the project for valuing Pay1 after making projections for upcoming 3 years.
Initially I was asked to understand the working of the company, different products offered, the competitors, its market standing, and further move to associating the numbers with this initial research. It was an incredible experience to work closely with real life scenarios. The best part about the internship was that it enabled me to get a hands-on experience with the real-life scenarios.
All through my journey I had a constant support from my mentor. Though he was the CFO of the company and had many responsibilities bestowed upon his shoulders but never did he refuse to help me out whenever I went to him with any of the silliest doubt of mine.
This sounds like a happy fairy-tale where everything is just so perfect without any issues or difficulties, well, that’s not true. It was not always this easy. There were times when I was too frustrated that I wanted to leave and come back, but amidst all that, I just reminded myself, nothing comes too easy. Since, it was a start-up, the data available was not very well managed, which lead to delay of work many-a-times.
In the last week of my internship, I gave a presentation on whatever I had worked upon in these two months in-front of the entire management and other interns as well. My mentor was extremely proud of me. And I was satisfied with to have done this internship because it helped me gain confidence to put forth my views and more importantly this internship gave me the clarity, I needed to pursue my career into the field of finance.