My internship at PwC Gurgaon is undisputedly one of the most exciting experiences I have had lately. I was allocated to the Gurgaon office, just 18kms away from Manesar, where I interned with Simplex Infrastructures Ltd. three years back. It brought back varied memories and made me feel at home.
I was assigned to the GRID SBU under the Advisory line of services. My office was on the 17
th floor of this humongous eighteen storied beautiful building. The office followed absolute flexibility in their work culture, with everyone eager to meet the entrants while extending a warm welcome to us. We were assigned a buddy and a people manager. Buddy is literally your first friend at the office, whom you can approach anytime regarding anything as minuscule as inquiring about the location of xerox machine to something as important as help with a deliverable and the People Manager is supposed to assign projects and check on the work progress. To my luck, both my buddy and people manager were very considerate of me and keeping in mind that I had no prior work experience, we had a thorough discussion on which project I can fit into.
I was placed in the health team with a project titled ‘global linkages project' which was concerned with transferring successful Indian health solutions to other countries which included countries like Philippines, Myanmar, Nigeria, Kenya and Nepal. The subject felt familiar to me as soon as I heard about it and realised that the questions I was asked during my PwC interview were related to this project material that I was supposed to be working on. As I was getting used to the work culture within the company, my task assigned for the first week was to structure a deliverable to be sent to a client. It was related to Reproductive, Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCH +A). I was assigned the ‘maternal, new-born and adolescent health' section of the report for the Philippines. My study involved identifying factors and parameters that affect maternal, new-born and adolescent health and also to prepare the profiles for successful Indian Health Solutions including Mobile Kunji, TrueHb, Sollu Engage, Vivo Healthcare skilling, Manyata etc. I studied the challenges as well as the solutions that were to be addressed, the details/features of the solution and the impact it would have in its pilot stage.
My next assignment was another deliverable under a cross-linkage project between India and Afghanistan. The project aimed at improving the health situation in Afghanistan. The project was in Phase 1 where we had to communicate with an Afghanistan based NGO called 'Palladium' regarding the possible gaps in Afghanistan health care system and who are the key Indian players that can help in making the Afghanistan healthcare facilities better. The deliverable I worked on was an excel sheet containing profiles of top Indian players across different sectors of hospitals, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical equipment suppliers and medical skilling institute segments and identified 10 players under Hospitals, Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostic centres and built their profiles. It involved secondary research which included evaluating Indian Healthcare players based on their services/products offered, annual turnover, infrastructure, partnerships, and presence in India and abroad.
Towards the second month of my internship, I was assigned to do a secondary research on healthcare choices of people i.e. what drives people to choose a particular healthcare service. The rationale of such a research was that the Indian public doesn’t have access to various hospital-related data to make informed choices about choosing a particular health facility. So, under the study, I had to look at global examples and compare it with Indian scenario while identifying various sources of hospital-related data in India and finally come up with key performing indicators for healthcare choices in the Indian context.
As my final assignment, I was asked to do a secondary research on the health assessment of mining-affected areas of Odisha, Jharkhand and Gujarat and to identify the mining-affected districts in the respective states, examine the various health problems being faced by mining workers and civilians in general. I was also asked to assess the health infrastructure available near the mining belt and focus on what government or NGOs have been doing to improve the health scenario in such places.
Besides my internship, I was fascinated by the pedagogy of work and took some time out of my packed schedule to write a paper titled “Identification of Mute Constructions and Facilitation of Usage in the context of India” which I went on to present at University College London (UCL) Grands Challenges Workshop held at Pune during my internship. The office timing allowed me to have the entire evening to myself and being a musician, I took the opportunity and explored open mic culture of Delhi and Gurgaon. Throughout the 2 months, I managed to perform at 11 different occasions which were all memorable.
To summarise, I had a really productive and work-heavy 60 days at PwC. I drank a lot of free office coffee (because let's just be honest, who doesn't?) and did use a lot of office writing pads, and oh the office buffet lunch! I am not sure what future has in store for me, but this internship painted a clear picture of where my interests lie.
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About the Author:
Sarthak Mohapatra
XSRM (formerly XIMB-RM)
2017-2019