What is life, if not an assortment of journeys? Some are more special than others, nonetheless, all of them contribute to your identity. The journey, that I am going to talk about is not yet over but it's so special to me that I better document it from the very beginning so as not to miss the minute details that I had cherished so much.
As we all know, summer placements are tough. They test your nerve, perseverance to an extent that you sometimes feel like giving up. but when you cross the barrier, you earn yourself a ticket to a great journey. For me, it was Mahindra GMC.
The journey began in the morning of 2nd April, at the iconic Mahindra towers. There were 35 of us, recruited from reputed B-Schools across the country, who were young, enthusiastic and ready to delve deep into the challenges that the corporate world had to offer. The GMC program organisers were aware of it and they rightly arranged what we needed most - insightful sessions with various leaders from different business functions that would give us a thorough understanding of Mahindra group and business purpose, aka the RISE philosophy. Starting with Dr. Anish Shah – Group President (Strategy), we had subsequent sessions by Mr. Samdish Chumber, Mr. Sunil Sharma – Vice President (CRM, FM & Marketing) , Chief Customer Officer (CCO) Mahindra lifespaces, Mr. Hemant Luthra – Chairman at Mahindra CIE, Dr. Prince Augustin – EVP Group Human Capital & Leadership Development at Mahindra & Mahindra and Mr. Parthasarathy V S – Group CFO and Group CIO Mahindra Group. Each and every session was insightful, engaging and the participants learned a lot from leaders of respective business functions.
The next day's interactions started with a bang - Mr. Pawan Goenka, the MD of Automotive and Farm sector came down for interaction and answered all our questions. The following sessions were taken up by Mr. Parag Shah – Managing Partner (Mahindra Partners), Mr. Anuj Mehra – Managing Director, Mahindra Rural Housing Finance Limited, and Mr. Rohit Malik – Chief Strategic Initiatives at Mahindra Holidays and Resorts India Ltd. Just when We were thinking that it could not get any better, the next surprise came up and this could possibly be called the highlight of the first two weeks! We got to meet none other than Mr. Anand Mahindra.
We went to his gateway office at Colaba which was a quaint building with a majestic interior. The discussion of GMC batch with Mr. Mahindra was more philosophical, where we were given food for thoughts like the paradigm of leadership and the purpose of life. These are the tiny bits of one's life that make it worth living.
We spent the next day at the Kandivali office and interacted with leaders from the AFS business function and electric mobility business. It was great to learn about how well the agribusiness was doing and what all new initiatives are being taken by Mahindra group to expand their footprint in the business. To me, what seemed fascinating is the stupendous inter-business synergy Mahindra group is having and how it is propelling the group towards collective growth and prosperity.
Last but not least, the food and other arrangements in all these days were extraordinarily sumptuous and deserve a huge round of applause. This has already been a journey that will be etched in my memory forever.