Post an engaging induction week, where we came to know the about the federation of businesses that belonged to the M&M group, we were sent to our respective ‘ground zero’ locations for our projects. My project required me to travel to ‘Garden and IT City of India’ - Bangalore, where I had been allotted a project in the auto division. The project details were communicated in advance by Mr. Aakash Parihar from the GMC Group HR team. I reached out to my project buddy – Mr. Pankaj Deshmukh – Regional Head of Sales, and my project mentor Mr. Manoj Gupta – Zonal Head of Sales. They were happy to share some of the focus points of the project and an overview of the automotive industry in the south over call before the internship began. This helped me carry out my secondary research before kick-starting the project.
After reaching Bangalore, I met my mentor and buddy who gave me a brief about the project. With 30+ years of shared sales experience between them, they shared their take on what are the current scenarios and functioning of the market. They also gave me guidance on how the project can be approached and gave me complete freedom to approach new ideas and not limit the scope of my working.
After a few days of understanding the market through field visits, my project mentor and buddy carried out the objective setting exercise through open discussions and various objective metrics that the project would measure. The first few days, I met various people who were working in the automotive division. It was indeed a diverse group with people who were at various tenures in their career, with different backgrounds, also hailing from different parts of the country. Despite prior commitments, everyone was very helpful in explaining various facets of the auto business and how there have been disruptive changes in the auto industry in the past few years.
I interacted with the ASMs, launch managers, corporate manager and all the other stakeholders across various dealerships in Bangalore to understand the first hand functioning of the business.
The project indeed seems challenging, however gives me ample opportunity to think out of the box and come up with novel, valuable and sustainable solutions.