The very first day in this giant of the fast moving consumer goods industry, in the sales department was overwhelming. I will always be grateful to my college, IIM Rohtak, to present me with this opportunity.

On the first day itself, I got the idea that the word ‘Sales’ was merely an expression in classes whereas on the field it is the outcome of your efforts. The work itself was management in its purest form. It was about managing yourself, your time, your relations, your work. This job showed me all the extremes - from going on the narrow streets in the hot summer of Delhi NCR with Salesman to understand the market to present your learnings and solutions in front of the Regional Head of a company like Dabur India Ltd.

The ocean of knowledge for FMCG is so widespread that you are bound to get lost at times but if you have right mentors who can share experiences and life lessons, it surely provides you with the direction. Some days you face failure and you don’t receive any appreciation you were hoping for. You feel that expectations of you are just too high but soon you realize that actually, you were not utilizing your potential and that external push from your mentor helped you reach your limits and beyond. I understood how building a brand works on the ground, what are the factors to push a brand on the ground and what resistances one faces.

The basics of Sales and Distribution would never have gotten so clear as they are now after doing marketing for a company like Dabur, for HPC products like Amla hair oil. This learning came from living the life of a salesman with the responsibility of regional head. This is the benefit of going on the field, you stop throwing around random ideas because you figure out what ideas have no scope, feasibility, and sustainability.

I look back at the submission I made at the end of the first week of my internship and my final presentation, I see a better decision maker in myself. I see a person who knows the business he is talking about because he has been on the field and observed and is not just throwing ideas which he heard somewhere without factoring in the context. I think what Dabur looks for in an intern is someone who will go in the market, make efforts, travel one extra mile to learn and get things done. Talking to retailers, having a cup of tea with the salesman, making sales call for products is something to enjoy and learn from because it is such an industry where not only the consumer goods but everyone is fast moving. The rapid pace of life is a necessity otherwise sooner or later you get precipitated.

Guidance and help are surely provided by experts who have spent more time in the business than your age but only if you are smart enough to seek and use it. Learning is so vast which can never be confined to cases or textbooks. Though the frameworks I learned inside the walls of IIM Rohtak also played a very important role. The learning from the class is small pieces of this huge puzzle. I grew as a decision maker, I listened and learned better, I handled people above and beneath me in the hierarchy. I understood how the market works, how products are sold and why they are sold that way, how pricing and brand image helps, what impact ads make, what measures can be taken to increase sales, how is marketing incomplete without sales and most importantly why summer internship is addressed as a golden opportunity.

Gurdatar Singh Ryait

Dabur,The Missing Piece of Me! - Summer Internship 2018