Internship Experience Of Being The First Intern At GSTSTREET

Internship after the first year of MBA is the summer experience of a lifetime. I have recently encountered such stimulation in a start-up called GSTSTREET, established in 2017. GST is the buzz word this year, the question though would be “What an HR intern would have done in GSTSTREET, especially when there were no full-time employees?” I’ll take you to a background picture. GSTSTREET aims at automating the accounting, taxation and compliance for the companies and small businesses. With the rollout of GST in July, it was the best time to execute the vision that my mentor and founder of the company Mr. Rishabh Sawansukha had from the very inception of GST bill. The company has partners, investors, sponsors and many part-time and freelance employees associated with it. I was hired for the tenure of two months starting April’3, 2017 along with 5 more interns from XIMB with different specialisations. Consented to work with a start-up I was enthused to start off the work on the first day itself. Being the millennial generation, I was ready for the challenges of working with a start-up, but the real difficulties were yet to be unfolded. On the first day, my mentor explained his vision to me and being guided by the CEO himself I was filled with motivation to create a new experience for myself and the company this summer. My first project was allotted to me where I had to work with the developers to create a product ”Hiring Zone” for an end to end automated hiring. Post project allotment all the interns were asked to come back the next day to begin their projects. A start-up venture brings with itself toils; one of it was space crunch in a one room office and lack of some resources. I was in a way losing zeal on the second day of internship. Then, as Rishabh sir started sharing his experiences I began grabbing the value points from those. I saw a person working extremely hard for the success of GSTSTREET, when he could easily have continued the effectual white-color job after 18 years of experience as taxation head in top notch companies. With the CEO as a guide, you get a plethora of opportunities to learn. Even if there were some challenges, I had the access to all the data of company; I was a full-time HR Manager in GSTSTREET dealing with the day to day functions like general emails to the confidential matters. In the midst of all this hustle, I began the feasibility analysis of Hiring zone. I pulled off with benchmarking all the existing job portals in India along with Interviewing some prominent Human Resource Managers and experts. Meanwhile, the second project was allotted “Draft the Manual of Policies for GSTSTREET employees”, we were three HR interns and hence, we divided the research for policies amongst us. Now I was researching for the draft of policies and was preparing the design for “Hiring Zone” along with coordinating with the developers for the same. One –month had passed in a breath and there was a lot to be done. I documented all details for the product and gave it to the developer for commencement of product code. Then I had to deal only with company policies. Then as expected from the great MBA internship there was another twist in the tail. My mentor assigned me another project   “ Trainers’ On-boarding and event coordination for CII’s Phase 1 of 80 cities GST Training Drive”. A heavy name and a very important project for the company as GSTSTREET was Technical Partners with CII here. I was expecting a lot of work now and all my expectations were satiated. Thankfully everyone at GSTSTREET worked as a team of one. Hence, I had a lot of support for the project, the work for cities in phase one was divided among the team and I dealt with my part as well as final coordination with trainers and CII. It was the work which gave me limitless exposure of the industry. I was introduced to eminent personalities in the field of taxation and I could take part in every decision making concerning the Training drive. I had a taste of managerial challenges and competencies through this on-boarding project. We all as a team of GSTSTREET had been part of the events of 19 cities till the conclusion of internship.  I was applauded for the CII project and other works on the last day of this summer saga on June’ 2, 2017. I had submitted the details of Hiring Zone for future reference in completing the product, had submitted the collated version of the company policies we three interns had drafted as well as all the information regarding CII project. . With immense support of Mr Rishabh and Mr Atul, the founders of GSTSTREET I have had an escapade to cherish this summer and hope that it will cater to my growth as an HR Manager. Now some MBA Summer Internship Gyan for the new joiners and aspirants:

• Profile is more important than the company
• You have a life to earn money but the experience of summer internship will not be earned again, hence do not aspire a lot of money at the cost of work profile
• A start up embarks a journey numerous opportunities with a lot many challenges
•  Grab the maximum opportunities in these two months and grow your profile
• It is the diversity and specificity of your work in these two months which will take you a long way