The GMC internship experience with Mahindra has been a great learning experience, a platform to network with some of the best minds in the country along with alumni and understand their way of working and approaching a problem. Here at Mahindra, other than my Guide and Buddy, the employees here also have been very supportive and friendly and are always willing to give any sort of constructive opinions and feedback about my work. Non-work-related discussions make the place very wholesome.
The first 4 weeks of the internship have offered a lot of learnings related to how market research and strategy formulation is outside the B school classroom. I had my mid-review in April where I have received appreciation and some pretty constructive feedbacks from my Project Guide about the further course of action.
The most important thing that I was told by my sector head was about getting insights from the customers on the field. And then started the most interesting part of the internship – the visit to rural areas for concept testing and stakeholder insighting. I’ve hit plenty of roadblocks and faced challenges in my field visit. The most challenging part was to visit Dairy Farms in villages in Alwar, Banas Kantha, and Jaipur, where there weren’t enough contacts and I had to find customers on my own. Convincing the stakeholders about our unique value proposition and meeting dealers and competitors has been of immense help. These were the things that I wasn’t confident of doing prior to my internship. Imagine if someone told you to visit 100 dairy farms in rural areas for consumer insighting!
But the challenges and the challenging timeline of the project had motivated me to take these deliverables head on and come up with plans and strategies to convince the stakeholders. The idea of targeting different districts and villages in different states was helpful as the market in the two states was completely different – Structure, buying power, and supply chain. This gave me and my team concrete data to develop a go to market and sales pitch for our product. Every time you feel demotivated to continue in the scorching heat, you meet a customer so amazing, who’s ready to share his heart out for a conversation and it just pumps up so much enthusiasm.
I am excited to see what the last week of the internship turns out and how the Mahindra group interprets my work and solutions. Wish me luck!