How would you describe your Mahindra Rise Challenge experience?
As excited as I was to kick start my new MBA journey at IIM Indore, I was more eager to participate in all the amazing Business School competitions which we had all heard of before joining campus. B-school competitions, we were told, catalyzed entrepreneurial innovation and helped us tackle diverse industrial problems while encouraging us to formulate disruptive solutions with the added perk of Pre-Placement Interviews and more. The Mahindra Rise Challenge was the very first competition to be announced for our batch PGP 2019-21 and it exceeded all my expectations.
The Rise Challenge was a 6-hour long competition that tested our leadership and decision-making abilities in a virtual business setup, followed by a deep introspection as to how we could leverage our experience and ideas to come up with something that could benefit the society at large. Coming up with innovative ideas has always been my forte, and hence the challenge seemed quite exciting and enticing to me. Within a fortnight, the results were declared, and I had an opportunity to experience the Mahindra Day. I was very delighted to know that I had been named the Campus Winner and was invited to Mahindra Headquarters in Bombay to interact with senior leaders and get an insight into how a day at Mahindra is. Everything including accommodation, travel, and food was taken care of by the company. Being at the Mahindra headquarters was a rewarding experience, I left feeling inspired and with memories to cherish. One of the other perks of winning the Mahindra Rise Challenge was a Pre-Placement Interview.
My interview was scheduled virtually over a video-conference call. The interview was more a scintillating formal conversation than a strict question-answer session, focusing majorly on my core values and principles. Soon, I received a mail offering me an internship opportunity at Mahindra. I was ecstatic and could not wait for my internship to start.
How would you describe your virtual internship experience with the Mahindra Group?
My internship project was on digital marketing for rural markets with a major focus on Mahindra Bolero. The day I received my project information, I was a bit confused as to how the stint would pan out. Being a city kid, I never had any exposure to rural India. Posts about Mahindra rural internship project experiences on Quora did excite me to join the internship when I realized that majority of the stint would include travelling all-round the country. Though, nervous at first, I was eager to take up the challenge and explore this journey of travelling to and interacting with people living in rural areas, to understand their purchasing mindset, and structure a completely rural-centric digital strategy for the brand.
A month before our joining, the WHO announced the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic. Our exams were postponed, we were sent home and India entered lockdown. Amidst the uncertainty of keeping my internship offer in this dwindling Indian economy, Mahindra came through. Being given a market research project, I was unsure as to how I would be able to complete my project. But Mahindra, as always known for its values and principles, asked all its interns to join virtually and ensured we were given utmost priority not only during onboarding but through the entire stint by all the stakeholders involved in our project. The GMC team was very prompt in their actions, supporting us at every stage with clear instructions on how the entire internship would pan out.
One of the most exciting things about Mahindra internships is the opportunity to interact with senior business leaders and most importantly the tycoon Mr. Anand Mahindra. Most of the interns were skeptical about whether we would be having the same learning opportunities that the earlier batches had, given the work from home and virtual internship. However, the GMC team ensured we got what was promised. All leadership sessions were held virtually where we could interact with senior leaders, know more about their corporate journeys and their views/perspectives about future India. Each intern could also personally connect with a senior business leader, share ideas and get doubts clarified which was the cherry on top
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Everyone from the Mahindra team, be it my project guide, buddy, HR POC or any other stakeholder in my project, was always ready to help in any way they could. Though there was a lot of support and help when I needed it, my superiors ensured I was independently able to make decisions and act whenever required. This sense of self-imposed accountability guided me to act more responsibly and take initiatives on my own which benefited the outcome of my project.
The entire journey from the Mahindra Rise Challenge to the end of my internship journey would always be etched in my memory-an adventure worth remembering.