It was the sunny afternoon of November 11, 2016. We were getting prepared for the recruitment procedure for Decathlon at our hostel premises. I can tell you now, anyone who has not gone through the sports round of Decathlon recruitment procedure has missed an experience of lifetime! It started with a ‘beep test’, a real test of endurance, followed by two uniquely designed team sports round. As demanding as it gets, the sports round is a true test of character and I don’t know how, but I got through it to be selected for the PI round. And guess what, the Decathlon people were super-awesome to conduct the process in sports attire! You can only imagine to walk into an interview room in your sports tee and shorts and come out of it, bagging a summer internship offer! Well, that’s exactly what happened to me!
After an interview of around 20 minutes, Whirlpool found me suitable to work with them as a summer intern and offered me a role in operations domain. I was extremely delighted to be a part of this organisation
My roller coaster ride aka MBA summer internship with Capgemini started on April 3rd, 2017 at their Pune office. The 3-day induction program was fun, exciting and gave us interns a brief overview about Capgemini, the different areas they worked upon and also a brief about the projects we will be doing. Throughout the induction program, we had interactions with different business department heads, CXOs and also the Group HR head. Their sessions were invaluable and those interactive sessions helped us in gaining insights into how we should go about our internship at Capgemini. After the induction program, I had to travel to Chennai for my project.
The summer internship is the time when budding managers get the chance to apply the classroom knowledge into the real world and have a sneak peak of the future which lies ahead after MBA. No matter how many quizzes, case studies or projects that we ace, nothing comes close to a live project in a company when it comes to the learning. I was lucky enough to get into the company whose existing supply chain network is already taught as a case study in B-schools.
As discussed in part 1 of the student-run ventures at IIM Lucknow article, this part 2 talks about Head2Toe, the girls’ parlour at IIM Lucknow. This academic year, three of us had the winning bid to run the parlour – Aishwarya, Surbhi and I. So far, we’ve been involved with the parlour for a little over a month since March mid, excluding the 2 months of the internship. However, even in the short span of time, it has proven to provide immense learning.
Siemens AG is a German Conglomerate company headquartered in Berlin & Munich. It is the largest industrial manufacturing company in the world. The principal divisions of the company are Industrial Sector, Energy Sector, Healthcare Sector, Infrastructure Sector & Financial Services. I was appointed in Siemens as management trainee intern for about 3 months. Where my Project was distributed in two phases. The first Phase of the Project involved Vendor Management in Gujarat, which covered Industrial sectors like Machine tools, Plastic, Packaging, Printing and Healthcare. During the overall course, I used to travel almost every week for the business purpose to places like Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Vadodara and Surat. My experience with all these vendors across the city made me realise the real sense of sales and marketing in practical life. As a role of Vendor Management Intern, I used to maintain a proper database of leads generation and keep a track on regular basis. My project involved onboarding of interested customers after scouting the market. My Second Phase of the Project was New Vendor Development in Gujarat Region. Which I felt was the toughest part of the project, since Vendor development in BTOB sector that too in a competitive environment of Gujarat was not so easy. I really faced lots of hurdles like Central Government Subsidy and State Government Subsidy which made my work difficult to convince Vendors to Tie-up with Siemens Financial Services. But the passion that Siemens employee share across the hierarchy has got me totally soaked into it that I felt like I am a part of this team. By constant working and researching, I managed to identify six Potential vendors across Gujarat in Machine Tool Industry and Plastic Industry. Finally, I was able to convert two Vendor of Ahmadabad in Plastic Industry and others being under process. Throughout the internship, I was mentored and guided by Mr. Deepak Jotwani, Assistant Vice President at Siemens Financial Services Western Region. His helping and motivating nature always encouraged me to do better in my field. being busy, going for meetings and handling an entire team of amazing people, yet he could manage time to intermittently check on me to see how I’m doing, whether I am enjoying the work I have been assigned, if I need any help, etc. Not only that, he has given me personal knowledge session about how the different department within the Siemens Financial Service network division functions. But also made sure that I make one to one interaction within the division. This further led to enhancement of my understanding of the Non-Banking Financial Company Line of Business. It was an amazing experience, where along with work we were also involved in other activities like Customer first week Celebrations, Birthday Parties, Community Lunch, healthy gatherings and fitness health checkups which made my journey more joyful. It was my honour to be a part of such a team and thank you, Siemens, for letting me accelerate with you.
I begin to pen down my summer internship experience, the most important question that crops up in my mind is, 'Was it the two most crucial months of my MBA?' I am sure most of the MBA students studying in reputed b-schools all over the country would have taken a moment or two to ponder over it during various stages of their MBA journey. As I begin to analyse the two months, the answer becomes a very resounding YES. I was placed in Brillio; a US-based technology firm which focuses on digital transformation and deploys disruptive solutions to enhance their customer's experiences. Being a Sales and Marketing enthusiast, I wanted to further my knowledge in Marketing and thus was hoping to get a project in that domain. We had an awe-inspiring induction where the top leaders of the company came and graced the occasion and emphasised on how the organisation has grown by leaps and bounds and how it focuses on speed and is inspired by potential. There were 22 interns in all from premier institutes like IIM Indore, IIT Bombay, SCMHRD, IIT Delhi, XIMB, NMIMS and all-in-all it was a great beginning. My hopes of getting a Marketing project were straightaway gone as I was inducted into the Consulting & Analytics team with a project on sales forecasting and demand planning. I tried hard to convince the management for a change to a Marketing- oriented project but I was encouraged to take it up as a challenge and work on the existing project. It was here that my first learning took place. NEVER EVER limit yourself to one domain or let’s put it this way, your favourite domain.With due course of time, I got myself acclimatised to the project which was a first in India in terms of the scale with which it was implemented. The amount of groundwork which had to be laid in terms of collecting data, analysing past trends, integrating data, predicting the accuracy of forecasted data, designing dashboards was simply staggering. What amazed me was the fact that I had to talk to so many teams not just in Brillio but also the client side which is what my second learning was all about. NETWORK till you die! In the short span of 2 months, I would have made close to 30 new acquaintances and interacted with more than 60-70 people. As they say, MBA is all about networking. In that sense, I was lucky to intern in an organisation which promotes an open work culture where everyone was so accessible, helpful and forthcoming. I worked hard at the same time on equipping myself with further Marketing knowledge undergoing certifications such as Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Hubspot. Having completed a year in one of the premier b-schools of the country, I can vouch for the fact that the amount of learning which certifications and participating in premier case-study competitions give is second to none. The third learning was NEVER STOP LEARNING. There is no limit to learning! You will be amazed at the kind of information and knowledge you would gain just by participating in a competition. My joy knew no bounds when on May 16th, I received my PPO for winning 3M's Invent A New Future Challenge National Competition. Winning a competition from among 925+ participants and presenting your solutions to the top management and being appreciated for the same surely was rewarding! It was an amazing competition in terms of its format (A video pitch eliminator followed by a case study solution and was held in mid-February) and was a truly enriching experience. To top it all, getting the first PPO of the batch really felt special.The fourth learning and perhaps one of the most important one is treating your competitors as your companions. Being in the company of elite b-school students, it was pleasure learning and taking inputs from other students. The kind of thought process and perspective which your peers can bring to the table can be fascinating in terms of the insights which it provides.
I had never heard of Eicher Polaris Private Limited until then. But Eicher Motors Limited of India and Polaris Industries of the US were legendary brands in the automobile sector. While sitting through the pre-placement talks and learning about their visionary multi-utility personal vehicle Multix, my trepidations began to disappear. I started to realise my opportunity of working on a radically new concept in an industry where even any meaningful incremental innovations are pretty few and far between. By the end of that day, the results had come and I knew I had 2 whole months in the coming summer to explore more about the awesome Multix.
