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Journey with the "House of Fragrance" - Summer Intern at McNROE

Jul 15, 2019 | 7 minutes |

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With 2.5 years of work experience before joining NMIMS Bangalore as a PGDM student and internship experience with Nivea India and McDonald's in Marketing domain while pursuing the PGDM course, I was waiting in the waiting room with my classmates for my turn of group discussion (GD) in the summer internship process of McNROE Consumer Products Pvt. Ltd. (popularly known for their brand WildStone deodorants and perfumes) after a short pre-placement talk by the organization. The GD groups before mine reported a selection rate of 20% (i.e. 2 out of 10 participants) and hopes were very thin. Our group size was 10 and an abstract topic "Air vs Water" was given to us for discussion and to my fortune, I was a little better at articulating abstract topics to the current scenarios in the market. It was a 10-minute discussion with varied opinions and perspectives but my group was good enough in concluding the discussion positively agreeing on single opinion with several add ons and we got the best selection rate of 50%. After GD the interview process was smooth and the questions were basic without much stress or grilling like tell me about yourself, elaborate your experience with Nivea and McDonald's etc. The results were announced quickly after the interview process and my classmate Supratim Dutta who intended to major in Operations domain and myself made through the interview for the summer internship at McNROE. On July 8th, 2019 my onboarding was done as a Summer Intern in the Sales and Marketing department of McNROE in their head office at Kolkata by Mr. Suneet who is a management trainee in the HR department. In the first half, we were learning about the organization, it's functioning, departments, structure, reporting authorities, values, culture, do and don'ts etc. Later of the day, we were allocated our projects and mentors (company guides). My mentor is the National Sales Manager - General Trade, Mr. Heemanshu Kumar Sinha and my project is to understand the sales and distribution system, identify challenges, business and process gaps in the system and provide a framework of a solution to the same. Mr. Sinha was calm and composed with immense business knowledge and exposure in the domain. He explained my project in detail and mentored me on how to proceed with the project and whom all to be in touch with for any kind of inputs. The day ended with lots of inputs flooded my brain but I was happy for not ending up in direct sales like a few of my friends interning with other organizations. I think Mr. Sunnet would have reconsidered my project as I already did sales and business development in my past work experience and previous internships. However, the project given to me had high expectations and I was also allocated to another special mentor Mr. Sukhdev Singh, Manager - New Product Development as Mr. Sinha would be busy which was pretty normal for a person holding such position. I met Mr. Sukhdev too on the first day. He was a highly dedicated and committed person having a sound business process and live market knowledge who always speaks about and believes in the structures and fundamentals sounding like an acute consultant, and even my project was also called as a sort of sales, marketing & distribution consulting kind of task when explained by Mr. Sunnet. In the sales and distribution system, there were few key process terms - the retailer, the distributor, the MIS (management information systems), the sales force, the primary (stock ordered by the distributor), the secondary (stock ordered by the retailer), the beats and the delivery logistics, and Mr. Sukhdev monitors the process heading and sitting with the MIS team where I was also allocated a seat to work from just beside Mr. Sukhdev. As I already have a little knowledge of FMCG processes and terms because of my past internship experience, I was able to hack through the system very easily. I made a step-by-step learning approach about the system at McNROE starting at the MIS. The MIS gives a broader view of the process and structure of the organization and I spent the entire 2 days just to know the functioning and response of the MIS to each and every process in the system. I also worked as a functional tester and developer of web applications at Cognizant at the beginning of my career after my B.Tech graduation which helped me in decoding the sales and distribution process through MIS very easily. After learning the entire efficiently laid structure and process of sales and distribution system, I went out for a market/beat visit with the top performing territory sales executive in Kolkata to compare the real market scenario with the expected or MIS structured scenario. The actual processes were way different in many aspects compared to expected ones but it wasn't a shock as it happens with most of the companies in the industry. Now that I got to know the variation in the work style, for the next 3 weeks I visited beat by beat, distributor by distributor and retailer by retailer with different sales executives, sales officers and area sales managers taking in-depth interviews, surveys and most of the times just observation to get thorough business understanding at the ground level in the market. And for a week I was engaged with the brand managers, trade marketing, scheme, operations and finance departments to know more intricacies and  nuances of the business and many why's, what's and how's like about the incentive structure, scheme structure, targets, sales forecast, advertisements, promotion strategies, sales returns, claims etc. With this, for understanding the entire business it took a month out of 2 months of my internship. Apart from the internship, we enjoyed a lot at Kolkata except for the insane humidity levels along with Supratim who was interning with the operations department at McNROE. He is a local in Kolkata and guided me through the city for sightseeing, restaurants, hang-out spots, IPL matches etc. The 2 months were so memorable in my life exploring a new city, meeting new people and friends, and learning a new language. The second month of the internship was very crucial where I spent 2 weeks in connecting the dots for the information I collected and learned in the organization, proposing and correcting the direction of my thought with the help of Mr. Sukhdev and Mr. Sinha. The last 2 weeks with the inputs and information I gathered, I identified and analyzed gaps in the process, working towards understanding and solving them and proposed a comprehensive solution framework to overcome the challenges and business gaps in the sales and distribution system. Finally, I ended my internship at McNROE with a presentation, report submission and a memorable farewell arranged by Mr. Sukhdev and MIS team. Mr. Sinha did his MBA at IIM-Kozhikode with huge experience in sales with various MNC's and industries. He belongs to a rare tribe of professionals who know the art of blending theories and best practices with on-ground reality to achieve results even in the most challenging environments. He is a top-exec who builds from the ground-up and will not think twice before rolling up his sleeves and doing what needs doing. He often brings a fresh and workable perspective & solution to challenges & situations that otherwise seem daunting!