Starting Small, Dreaming Big and Achieving the Best - Vijeth K, SIBM Pune
The rush at Pantaloons during the sale seasons. Those visits to Allen Solly for getting your birthday dress. The perfect wedding suit you ever got yourself for someone else’s wedding – Louis Phillipe. Little does one realize that it’s all under the same umbrella or maybe not, they do. Sheltered and nurtured by the Aditya Birla Group (ABG), these brands and countless more have been an integral part of our lives with their own distinctions, sometimes subtle while obvious at other times. A part of our emotions seems to latch onto these products, irrespective of the occasions. Be it those school-time paranthas in the Freshwrapp foil or it’s crumbling into a ball to play cricket, ABG has lived along with us. Being a mechanical engineer, I understand the importance of Ultratech cement – ‘The Engineer’s Choice’ which is also our country’s numero uno cement company. While an idea can change a life, the diverse business verticals set up by ABG have given us a plethora of ideas of how successful conglomerates can be, even across different regions around the world, when they have sound business practices. When companies of such stature engage themselves in sustainable practices across their industrial lines as well as lending hands to different sections of the community to facilitate inclusive growth, it is more than just a blessing. For most of us who dream to work in big business corporations, the story of ABG, with its small start is an inspiration. Its success is a testimony to the business expertise of the Birla family and we hope to understand and imbibe as much as we can from their lives. The most challenging situation that I encountered in my professional life was when I had to take a decision on whether to continue or quit working for the startup that I co-founded with my friends at college. It was at a time when we had just received incubation support from our University’s Incubation Centre. Just before my decision, I was juggling my final year project work and a technical -sales paid internship at a construction equipments company along with the demanding work at the startup. Since the work involved my presence at a different city, I had to resign from the internship after completing a two-month project. Thereafter, when I finished my final year project and spent a few weeks with the startup alone, I realized that this entrepreneurial learning curve was not suitable for me. I needed a different theoretical based, more analytical approach for further enhancing my skills and capabilities. The major lessons I learnt all through these pursuits were that of risk-taking and acceptance. Giving up a paid internship role (which was convertible to a full-time position) for your own startup, demands a lot of courage and strength. And again, quitting the startup that you’ve religiously worked for one and a half years requires an abundance of fortitude. You need to accept that at times, you are not at the right place and you need to change your direction. With barely a few months left for the MBA exams, I managed to work hard and secure admission into one of the premier B-schools of our country.
Vijeth K
Deciphering the investment world.
Right from my childhood days, the term "Finance" has always fascinated me. My curious mind always used to wonder what's so important about this word that every individual responsible adult uses this word with a fret, Hence i wanted to decode this terminology all together and see why this word brings constant distress and panic on everyone's face. Thankfully after 25 long years when i decided to go for MBA i got the opportunity to blend with this terminology. I was exuberant on getting opportunity to work as an intern in JM Financial Services Ltd. , thanks to the summer internship program i was getting a chance to develop my skills in Finance as well as Investment world.
Rohit Zope
Internships can help go beyond limitations
Today in the extremely competitive and client centric market, the key experience needed for marketing are strong grasp on analytics, understanding the buyer needs and the sales process, ability to communicate with the customers and creating strategies for gaining competitive leadership. Thus I chose the company Godfrey Phillips so that I would get an exposure to the consumer durables industry. My preparation strategy was simple- just study about the industry, competitors and the products. I had a hint that they might offer us the tobacco sector, so I prepared myself for the questions related to surrogate marketing and the government laws related to such kind of marketing. I sat for the interview and secret to crack the interview is that you have to give honest answers. I have a bad habit of being too out-front which is usually not advisable for any interview, but surprisingly it turned out to be favourable for me that day as I was selected after I asked the question "how do you manage to increase the sales of something like a cigarette with so many governmental restrictions?". Their reply was - "you'll know after joining the company" . Quite obviously, I was assigned the tobacco sector for digital marketing. It was an extremely challenging job to devise and implement the marketing strategy for such a sector where there were so many restrictions and limited options because of the government laws. But I managed to fabricate and develop unique ideas like proximity marketing, emojis marketing, new technologies on voice and sms marketing etc. which were appreciated and implemented at a wide scale. MBA helped me in developing a mindset and the aptitude needed to construct such marketing strategies. It is very important to keep yourself up to date with the latest trends in the market and the knowledge on the latest tools. You must not limit yourself to the bookish knowledge, so try to get the corporate experience through the real time case study competitions and live projects. In the end I would like to thank my organization mentors Mr. Subhodeep Sarkar, Mr. Prem Sharma, Mr. Gajendra and the digital marketing team of GPI for helping me throughout my internship and pushing me to greater limits. In the end, make the best use of the MBA experience and go beyond the limitations!
Sagar Saini
Unraveling New Age Stakeholder Communications
This story stresses on the work experience I have gathered as an Intern in the AICL Communications (Pvt.) Ltd from April 01, 2019 until May 31, 2019. I mainly have incorporated my experience at AICL especially in business development, project management etc. where I had to work with different brands and an analysis on the roles of business development in B2B over B2C which is a blend of my AICL experience. I was mainly involved for generating leads for companies’ annual report making. Since its inception in 2007 in Mumbai, AICL has always been conserving quality service and now it is one of the renowned and biggest stakeholder communication consultancies agencies in the country within a very short time. I had to manage projects where some creative done by AICL’s Creative department under my department’s supervision where I followed-up are also provided. The project’s objective is to understand the role of annual report in stakeholder communication and selling the consultancy service to the prospects. This involved a lot of email writings and following on the conversation henceforth. I have also been involved in the presentation makings for the prospective clients. AICL has a good internship program. Agency people have to work much for uplifting a brand. There is an agency client gap in listed companies of India, if it can be reduced, it may make the works for both the parties very easily. Again, agencies and corporates are not taking annual report seriously till now. More investments in stakeholder communication is needed which may give a better visibility of the brands and make the advertising and marketing atmosphere more delightful which may amaze people with its’ beauty.
Ashish Deomore
My Internship Diary
Academic programs have a tendency to be fairly theoretical for the most part. An internship allows to interrupt far from it and get into the corporate world to strive out some of the remarkable ideas learnt within the business school magnificence.
Joyeeta Sarma
My internship story at 'Interface AI'
I did my internship at a vibrant startup 'Interface AI' who is a leading provider of the Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) or commonly known as Chatbot solutions to various industries. Since this was going to be my first industry exposure, I wanted to gain experience in what is known as the 'Sunshine' sector that is artificial intelligence, and that is what I exactly got. My work during the internship revolved around conducting market research for the IVA or chatbot industry, and competitor analysis. The teams that I worked for were digital marketing and strategy team. My two month's stint at 'Interface AI' was quite rigorous but at the same time, it was very fulfilling in the terms of learning and gaining knowledge and experience.
KILLOL GOVANI
Starting Small, Dreaming Big and Achieving the Best - Vijeth K, SIBM Pune
The rush at Pantaloons during the sale seasons. Those visits to Allen Solly for getting your birthday dress. The perfect wedding suit you ever got yourself for someone else’s wedding – Louis Phillipe. Little does one realize that it’s all under the same umbrella or maybe not, they do. Sheltered and nurtured by the Aditya Birla Group (ABG), these brands and countless more have been an integral part of our lives with their own distinctions, sometimes subtle while obvious at other times. A part of our emotions seems to latch onto these products, irrespective of the occasions. Be it those school-time paranthas in the Freshwrapp foil or it’s crumbling into a ball to play cricket, ABG has lived along with us. Being a mechanical engineer, I understand the importance of Ultratech cement – ‘The Engineer’s Choice’ which is also our country’s numero uno cement company. While an idea can change a life, the diverse business verticals set up by ABG have given us a plethora of ideas of how successful conglomerates can be, even across different regions around the world, when they have sound business practices. When companies of such stature engage themselves in sustainable practices across their industrial lines as well as lending hands to different sections of the community to facilitate inclusive growth, it is more than just a blessing. For most of us who dream to work in big business corporations, the story of ABG, with its small start is an inspiration. Its success is a testimony to the business expertise of the Birla family and we hope to understand and imbibe as much as we can from their lives. The most challenging situation that I encountered in my professional life was when I had to take a decision on whether to continue or quit working for the startup that I co-founded with my friends at college. It was at a time when we had just received incubation support from our University’s Incubation Centre. Just before my decision, I was juggling my final year project work and a technical -sales paid internship at a construction equipments company along with the demanding work at the startup. Since the work involved my presence at a different city, I had to resign from the internship after completing a two-month project. Thereafter, when I finished my final year project and spent a few weeks with the startup alone, I realized that this entrepreneurial learning curve was not suitable for me. I needed a different theoretical based, more analytical approach for further enhancing my skills and capabilities. The major lessons I learnt all through these pursuits were that of risk-taking and acceptance. Giving up a paid internship role (which was convertible to a full-time position) for your own startup, demands a lot of courage and strength. And again, quitting the startup that you’ve religiously worked for one and a half years requires an abundance of fortitude. You need to accept that at times, you are not at the right place and you need to change your direction. With barely a few months left for the MBA exams, I managed to work hard and secure admission into one of the premier B-schools of our country.
Vijeth K
Deciphering the investment world.
Right from my childhood days, the term "Finance" has always fascinated me. My curious mind always used to wonder what's so important about this word that every individual responsible adult uses this word with a fret, Hence i wanted to decode this terminology all together and see why this word brings constant distress and panic on everyone's face. Thankfully after 25 long years when i decided to go for MBA i got the opportunity to blend with this terminology. I was exuberant on getting opportunity to work as an intern in JM Financial Services Ltd. , thanks to the summer internship program i was getting a chance to develop my skills in Finance as well as Investment world.
Rohit Zope
Internships can help go beyond limitations
Today in the extremely competitive and client centric market, the key experience needed for marketing are strong grasp on analytics, understanding the buyer needs and the sales process, ability to communicate with the customers and creating strategies for gaining competitive leadership. Thus I chose the company Godfrey Phillips so that I would get an exposure to the consumer durables industry. My preparation strategy was simple- just study about the industry, competitors and the products. I had a hint that they might offer us the tobacco sector, so I prepared myself for the questions related to surrogate marketing and the government laws related to such kind of marketing. I sat for the interview and secret to crack the interview is that you have to give honest answers. I have a bad habit of being too out-front which is usually not advisable for any interview, but surprisingly it turned out to be favourable for me that day as I was selected after I asked the question "how do you manage to increase the sales of something like a cigarette with so many governmental restrictions?". Their reply was - "you'll know after joining the company" . Quite obviously, I was assigned the tobacco sector for digital marketing. It was an extremely challenging job to devise and implement the marketing strategy for such a sector where there were so many restrictions and limited options because of the government laws. But I managed to fabricate and develop unique ideas like proximity marketing, emojis marketing, new technologies on voice and sms marketing etc. which were appreciated and implemented at a wide scale. MBA helped me in developing a mindset and the aptitude needed to construct such marketing strategies. It is very important to keep yourself up to date with the latest trends in the market and the knowledge on the latest tools. You must not limit yourself to the bookish knowledge, so try to get the corporate experience through the real time case study competitions and live projects. In the end I would like to thank my organization mentors Mr. Subhodeep Sarkar, Mr. Prem Sharma, Mr. Gajendra and the digital marketing team of GPI for helping me throughout my internship and pushing me to greater limits. In the end, make the best use of the MBA experience and go beyond the limitations!
Sagar Saini
Unraveling New Age Stakeholder Communications
This story stresses on the work experience I have gathered as an Intern in the AICL Communications (Pvt.) Ltd from April 01, 2019 until May 31, 2019. I mainly have incorporated my experience at AICL especially in business development, project management etc. where I had to work with different brands and an analysis on the roles of business development in B2B over B2C which is a blend of my AICL experience. I was mainly involved for generating leads for companies’ annual report making. Since its inception in 2007 in Mumbai, AICL has always been conserving quality service and now it is one of the renowned and biggest stakeholder communication consultancies agencies in the country within a very short time. I had to manage projects where some creative done by AICL’s Creative department under my department’s supervision where I followed-up are also provided. The project’s objective is to understand the role of annual report in stakeholder communication and selling the consultancy service to the prospects. This involved a lot of email writings and following on the conversation henceforth. I have also been involved in the presentation makings for the prospective clients. AICL has a good internship program. Agency people have to work much for uplifting a brand. There is an agency client gap in listed companies of India, if it can be reduced, it may make the works for both the parties very easily. Again, agencies and corporates are not taking annual report seriously till now. More investments in stakeholder communication is needed which may give a better visibility of the brands and make the advertising and marketing atmosphere more delightful which may amaze people with its’ beauty.
Ashish Deomore
My Internship Diary
Academic programs have a tendency to be fairly theoretical for the most part. An internship allows to interrupt far from it and get into the corporate world to strive out some of the remarkable ideas learnt within the business school magnificence.
Joyeeta Sarma
My internship story at 'Interface AI'
I did my internship at a vibrant startup 'Interface AI' who is a leading provider of the Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) or commonly known as Chatbot solutions to various industries. Since this was going to be my first industry exposure, I wanted to gain experience in what is known as the 'Sunshine' sector that is artificial intelligence, and that is what I exactly got. My work during the internship revolved around conducting market research for the IVA or chatbot industry, and competitor analysis. The teams that I worked for were digital marketing and strategy team. My two month's stint at 'Interface AI' was quite rigorous but at the same time, it was very fulfilling in the terms of learning and gaining knowledge and experience.
KILLOL GOVANI