You Don't Have To Be Great To Start - A Summer At PNB
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE GREAT TO START, BUT YOU HAVE TO START TO BE GREAT.” –ZIG ZIGLAR
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE GREAT TO START, BUT YOU HAVE TO START TO BE GREAT.” –ZIG ZIGLAR
An Internship at Kalpataru Residency which I would rather prefer to call a short journey had given me an opportunity to explore and expose myself to an industry in which I never taught I would work. Kalpataru is one of the prestigious and leading conglomerates spread over Real Estate, Power Transmission and Distribution, Civil Infrastructure and logistics. The focus in real estate has been on the development of premium residential, commercial, retail, integrated townships, lifestyle gated communities, and redevelopment projects primarily in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) & Pune. I worked for Kalpataru Residency, part of Kalpataru group which has launched a project for the first time in Hyderabad. On the first day of my internship, I was excited and anxious as real estate is a new field where I need to learn from scratch and work to the best of my potential. I met interns from various B-Schools with diversified culture and backgrounds. Having worked in the field of information technology, I had to adapt and be receptive to the drastic change in the working style and culture of the company. Though I felt it a bit challenging to get accustomed to the people and the environment, it had been an interesting and rewarding experience.
Courage, Commitment and Compassion, when come together I believe can change the world. To have the courage to take on challenges, to soar beyond the ordinary; to have the commitment it takes to reach the finish line and progress with compassion is what I strive for every day.
Pre Interview: This is one of the normal days when I was on an outing and my mail box showed a popup. It contained registration form of Medlife International which was offering a summer internship in finance to PGDM students. After doing deep root analysis about the pros and cons I filled the form just a few minutes before the deadline. Now preparation was a mammoth task that stood in front of me. Assuming I would get a lot of time for the preparation, I decided to enjoy my outing.
MBA is a short route (as assumed) taken by many to get the Middle and Higher managerial jobs which can help you grab huge salaries and make you work in the companies you desire and the role which you want to take up in your professional life. The first step towards such jobs is what summer internship is all about.
Back to corporate life after attending lectures for around 10 months was something that was eagerly waited for. I was privileged to get associated with Gmmco Ltd, a CK Birla Group, in its HQ office Chennai. Summers in Chennai is something that needn’t be explained in details. The environment in Gmmco is so welcoming, the employees are so friendly, that the very first day itself I made friends. The comfort zone that was built up helped me a lot during my entire course of two months. I was allotted to the Marketing & Communications department and was given a laptop on the very first day. This itself shows how much respect they have for their interns and how fast is the system there.
I interned at Avail Finance, a young fin-tech startup in the heart of Bangalore. Coming back to the Corporate world after a year of studies felt really nice. Avail Finance is an online lending platform which works on a B2B2C model, where it works with employers, who in turn help their blue-collared workforce get loans through Avail. The company is a leading player in this segment which includes competitors like Shubh Loans, Paysense, Faircent, Smartcoin etc. The process of availing a loan has a multi-tiered structure where there are different stages through which a loan application has to go through in order to get either rejected, approved or cancelled. These stages include presubmission of the loan application, pre-approving, data analysis and reviewing, decision making and finally money transfer.
As I embarked on my MBA Journey, the first week at college made me realise how leisurely and laidback my life had been thus far. This was despite the fact that I was working in one of the Big 4s and had spent 12- 16 hours every day at the office for months. But MBA was markedly different from anything and everything that I had experienced in life.