It’s an almost warm, rainy day in July. The newly-selected PGP Batch has just about arrived on campus. The experience begins even before one can actually reach the campus gate. As you move from Indore city, towards Rau on the outskirts, the transition is seamless. Soon, you’re on the straight road that runs from Rau to Pithampur.
For us Indians, summer is a season that often evokes mixed feelings. Many among us persevere through the heat and grind it out with the hope that poetic comfort of the monsoons is not far away. My summer internship experience with Hindustan Unilever wasn’t any different. After the whirlwind journey of summer internship placement process that culminated in an early morning interview, I felt like a budding artist who got his first opportunity in the big stage. The anxiety that came with my first full-fledged corporate stint seeped into my system as I walked into the HUL campus along with 79 other interns. A little anxiety, a lot of curiosity and plenty of heart was just right kind of mix that helped me blend into the much-celebrated culture of HUL. The opening sessions nicely laced ice-breaking games with business orientation sessions like a perfectly made sandwich with the right choice of veggies and sauces.
When you are looking for an exposure in BFSI sector, what better opportunity you could get than a company in growing stage in insurance domain, heading towards its break even. This opportunity was provided to me by Future Generali, a joint venture between the Future Group and Generali, a 183-year-old Italian insurance company. While some may associate insurance industry experience to be necessarily a sales experience, it was surprising for us to see them providing a crucial Strategy and Marketing role when it visited IIM Rohtak. The role was for the company's newly formed Bancassurance partnership with a bank.
Joining an IIM brings a lot of excitement since it is one of the top B-schools of India. However, IIMs also bring hectic schedules with numbers of lectures and crazy life with tons of assignments and projects. But it also brought a whole new learning technique for me that I haven’t witnessed but the only herd which is “the pedagogy of case study”, a process in which you learn with past experiences of others and apply your theories and principles on that situation and act like a key decision maker.
Many campuses boast diversity in the traditional categorizations of gender, academic degree, years slaved away as Dilberts *cough* worked etc. I have a contrarian view. The day we arrive at b-school, we are constantly reminded of the power of networking. I was sceptical about this as networking somehow felt like a dirty deed since there was something transactional about the whole idea. To ease my cognitive dissonance (OB does come in handy) I reframed the act as meeting new people and ‘getting out of my comfort zone’(typical self-help cringy cliché).
Many people dismiss Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management as not necessarily important courses in the purview of their entire MBA education. It is pushed aside as a course important only to those who wish to pursue HR as a specialization, and as a compulsory course meant to be gotten through with minimum effort for those in other specializations. However, one experience during an HRM lecture at my college has managed to stay with me until now and reminds me from time to time that there is more to a business than just profit making.
IIM Indore retains and reinforces some differentiating features from its earlier programme design: Unique rural immersion programme to give graduates contextual connect: To enable the participants to understand the social context in which organizations work and exist, an exposure to the rural settings of Madhya Pradesh is included in the course design. Experiential learning- Students visit a company once a week in the first year of the Programme. They are required to carry out a study on various industries and key players in the industry. This enhances their exposure to organizations and provides them with a backdrop for analyzing the managerial contexts of different cases. Himalaya outbound programme for PGP-II students: While participants are adequately prepared for a corporate career, their ability to motivate themselves to perform in an unfamiliar ambiance and work as a team is enhanced by encouraging them to undergo an outbound exercise and simulation conducted in serene locations at various altitudes in the Himalayas. While students get to pursue electives of their choice, they are also given an opportunity to register for workshops to get focused knowledge on the skills and practices applicable to specific functional domains. IIM Indore students participate in a wide range of extra and co-curricular activities which include IRIS (The Annual Management & Cultural Festival) and Utsaha (Rural Marketing Fair). Strong Student Exchange Programme: IIM Indore has exchange tie-ups with several prestigious international business schools. Many students visit these business schools and complete one semester there.
Wondering if I am doing the right thing, I was waiting on Har Ki Pauri, Haridwar for the Ganga aarti to start. It was six thirty in the evening, the last day of the second week of my summer internship at Patanjali Ayurved Limited. There were still fifteen minutes for the aarti. People were all settled around. They actually started taking their place from five thirty in the evening. Staff members of Ganga association in blue dress had taken their place among those devotees, at equal spaces. All of a sudden, as if by the hint of the drop of a coin, every staff person started pitching for the donation. All in one sync, but all in different words. Every single one of them had their own way of pitching. These were some of the best sales pitch I had heard in my life. I started doubting my own talents. A nine-pointer from IIM Rohtak, trying to understand the consumer behaviour for acquiring new customers for the fastest growing FMCG company, not able to get the responses for his survey, observing and appreciating the pitch of Ganga association staff to get donations.
