‘A Soonicarn’, ‘A leader in online deliveries of fruits & vegetables’, ‘One of the best Supply Chain Network company’ – these were some of the fluttering thoughts in my head as I sat inside a big warehouse of 2,00,000 sq. Ft., waiting for my internship journey to commence. It’s been a week now that the internship is over and not a day goes by when I don’t want to rewind time and relive those 8 weeks.
It all began in February. Bigbasket conducted an interview where different aspects of the past experiences of the candidates were discussed. The interview questions were a barometer of our knowledge of the domain and how aware we are of the latest trends in the industry. Once I was ‘spotted’, a seamless on boarding process was initiated where the other leaders welcomed me through calls and emails. I was assigned a mentor and a sponsor who would help me navigate through my internship days.
Bigbasket probably has the most compact and meticulous planned summer internship program. It packs in an informative 2-day induction program, followed by several meetings with the process owners who give us a peek into the current processes being followed and of course, coffee sessions and lunch breaks.
I had the opportunity to work on a dynamic project during my stint with Bigbasket. The project was to develop a Supply Chain Model for expansion in Delhi for B2B vertical based on optimizing logistics & warehouse expense matrix. It seemed a little overwhelming at the outset, being the intern only for 8 weeks and getting the project which will be implemented for a year, but a day later I was looking at a Gantt chart that had my internship drilled down to each day. Things move fast at Bigbasket. All the work I did was deeply rooted in research and driven by data. There was no reporting time or a mandatory number of hours that we had to clock at office. In fact, we were given the freedom to work from any place we wanted, at any hour we wanted to.
Bigbasket taught me to look at a problem through a different set of lenses. I learnt to identify the business need, to chart out a detailed action plan and to measure the impact of my actions to the business. I learnt to be through with each step of my action plan – there was no place for half-baked work and the results without the backing of the data. I learnt the art of story boarding – presenting my project in the form of a fluid story, connecting the dots like a constellation. I learnt impeccable presentation skills and how to field questions with confidence in a room full of leaders. I came out of internship more polished and sophisticated person than I had ever been.