I interned with Cipla in their Corporate Strategy team.
It was a two-step process for me to get into Cipla. First was a group discussion followed by a personal interview. Cipla has a unique group discussion where we were given a situation (problem) and few alternatives, wherein we had to assign proper level of importance to various alternatives. What the panel was looking over here is not just our judgment about various alternatives but also the skill with which we convince our colleagues about our logic and come to consensus for solution within the stipulated time period. For juniors the message here would be, to stay calm and be rational with the logic and flow of events, just consider the activity as a routine conversation with friends and the nervousness will be automatically eliminated. For the interview per se there was not much of conversation regarding theoretical knowledge, but more about real life experiences of leadership. Being a fresher major discussion was about what contributions I have made in my college festival and how I managed to inspire and motivate the team throughout the preparation and execution stage. Before the placement season began I read about different industries and did a project about fighter brands and how this concept played a role in various industries. A lively conversation about this topic with respect to pharmaceutical industry really turned the game in my favor.
Before joining the company I went through annual reports of not just Cipla but also few of its competitors which helped me gain a proper insight of the competitive advantages of various companies. Upon joining the company I was assigned to the corporate strategy team. There were two major things I was looking forward to in the internship and was fortunate enough to achieve both of them. First was quality of work and another was making connections. In this journey of two months what I realized was quality of work is obviously important and it reflected as the work I did was used for discussion in the board meeting, but more than this what mattered was how you carry yourself regularly. It was about communicating your work with ease and confidence. During the initial phase I was overwhelmed to be a part of the Corporate Strategy team and felt nervous, with time I eased down. This was a crucial experience for me as I can carry on this confidence to whichever team I go henceforth and get on the same page quickly. During my stint I had opportunity to meet and present my work to various CXOs of the company, I have already mentioned about the communication skills perspective, another perspective is the “thought-process” that these people bring to the table. The discussions revolved around the strategies of how to take the business ahead. This was my biggest take away from the internship, the perspective of looking at the scenario and identifying various growth drivers and opportunities to leverage upon and most importantly how to analyze all the implications it could have. The essence was the way in which a complex business problem was decoded and acted upon in a simple logical manner.