Ashwin Verghese

Internships… Also known as the 2 months of work which is forced on students by every B-school of the country, which could have been a really fun summer vacation. You may wonder why B-schools make it mandatory for everyone and even I did when I studied too. I guess you’d only be able to realise the full value of an internship once you do one. Anyways, I’m going to share my Internship story and maybe you’ll benefit. At least that’s the hope. So, yeah my internship story began while I was at college cause like most students in a B-school I too sat for the Internship Placement Process. I was quite picky when it came to sitting for the placement processes of various companies. Since I was planning to major in Finance in the second year, I wanted to do my internship in company which was in the Banking and Financial Services Sector. The placement processes started some time in the month of November at our college and a lot of my batchmates were placed by the end of the year. I was pretty adamant when it came to what I wanted, so I sat for just 3 processes. I made it to the final round of one of the companies but did not get selected and I went out earlier in the other 2. I still had some hope of getting an internship in college but before I knew it I was in the month of march which no internship in my hand. I began to get a little worried so I called my Dad up and asked him if he could find out if I could intern somewhere. To my luck, there was someone at Kotak Securities who he knew and she was willing to take me in as an intern and mentor me. I was quite happy and relieved. My first day I got to have a discussion my mentor at the company about the work that I would be involved in. The work which I had to do was to do an Industry analysis of the Mutual Fund Industry as well as understand the differences among the various competitors in the Mutual Fund Direct Plan Platforms as Kotak Securities had launched one. Luckily for me there were other interns as well. This helped me get settled in quite quickly. Apart from this I also got an opportunity to observe first hand how intense work life was for some of the people at the company. There were times where I saw people talking to a person on the mobile in one hand and another person on the landline. I began to get a feel of how work would be after college and in a way I feel the internship prepared me for what would come. The internship also helped me build contacts as I got the opportunity to interact with a lot of colleagues. The actual work at the internship also helped me sharpen my interpersonal skills as I was involved interacting with a lot of potential clients as well as pitch to them the new service offering available at the company. This internship taught me a lot of things and I would always remain grateful to my mentor for this. I guess I would like to end by saying that one should look at an internship as a learning opportunity when it comes anyone’s way.