How was my first week at Mahindra? Well, not like any of my peer’s interning in different companies. From informative speaker sessions to fun activities, it was filled with all the flavors one could have expected. Mahindra allowed us to understand the group and the partners through & through and this made us feel a part of the big Mahindra family already.
B-schools teach us the importance of networking, and it doesn’t mean restricting ourselves to just our college mates. Internship is a time we get to interact with students of various other prestigious B-schools. But given the strict timeline of internships, many companies forget the importance of networking, and hence interns do not get much time to know each other well. Mahindra’s GMC program, on the other hand, planned the whole induction in a way that every intern gets the opportunity to interact with each other as well as the leaders. The sitting arrangements were such that interns from different b-schools sat together and shared their varied experiences. I got the opportunity to sit with interns from IIM A, C, and XLRI. It was a fruitful experience as I got to know so much about the learnings that they gained from their respective schools.
The interactive sessions with the leaders were something that I always dreamt of, as listening to the stories from the flag bearers themselves is a fantastic experience. All the questions from the interns were treated important and were well entertained. The respectful approach of the leaders towards us interns was evident as they didn’t mind to repeat an answer for someone who missed it the first time.
All of us were eagerly waiting for the interactions with Mr. Anand Mahindra, and Mr. Pawan Kumar Goenka and they indeed turned out to be one of the best experiences. Although there were time restrictions, Mr. Pawan Goenka tried to answer as many questions he could and gave us so many insights about the industry which many of us were not aware. The session with Mr. Anand Mahindra was an unexpected one. We had prepared all sorts of questions for him to ask ,but it was not a Q&A session. He entered the room, greeted all of us enthusiastically and without wasting much of the time gave us a topic to discuss on. According to Mr. Anand Mahindra “the best ideas come from the young minds in such open discussions” and we GMC’s managed to amuse him with our insights. This boosted our confidence, and once the topic was on the floor, the arena was all ours. It was an amazing discussion, and Mr. Anand Mahindra allowed everyone to speak and put forth their points. For me, getting an opportunity to talk to him was definitely a fangirl moment.
The induction wasn’t just restricted to the informative sessions; the HR team had also planned some ice-breaking fun activities for us in collaboration with The Board Game Co. It was a fun two hours event which included team building activities and taught us the importance of interacting, working together and strategizing. We even had a Design Thinking session with Mr. Suranjan Das, a renowned Professor from SPJIMR. The session helped us to understand that
innovation has to be desirable, feasible & viable and it is a combination of insight, idea & impact. We got to know that customer
need is of two types, rational need, and emotional need, and most of the times emotional needs are not catered, and this is what design thinking helps us to overcome to become the market leader.
The whole induction program was comprehensively designed, and I bet it was an enlightening experience for all the interns. Now I have started working for my project in Mahindra Susten, the cleantech arm of the Mahindra Partners, and am still in the phase of understanding the current processes and looking forward to gaining amazing insights from upcoming weeks.
Stay tuned for updates!