Being from the engineering background, like any other MBA student who is taking up finance as majors. Entering the unknown is always a challenge and especially when you sit in a class of 40 students out of which half already know what is being taught and said while you stare at the annual report on you excel sheet wondering what is going on and what do these numbers mean. With this phobia in mind before entering every finance class to going for the Summer Internship interviews was a journey not for the faint heart.
So came the internship months of April and May where I interned with Airtel India and was in the finance department and gladly to my stars the role was offered was more than just finance, it included finance, business and growth strategy. The internship covered parts of business strategy where how the finance teams look into business decisions for growth of Product Category business which basically deals with the online content like My Airtel App. I worked on realizing the true numbers of maximum growth opportunities in different circles, what strategies can be applied based on different customer indicators and what combinations of such strategies are actually achievable.
Getting a broad number is the easy part but the challenge begins when you have to bifurcate it to the actual growth percentages and numbers.
Along with this I also worked on cost control for customer and business waivers. These waivers are given to users for various business reasons like process failures, retention schemes etc. these costs when accumulated create a huge chunk of business expense. We worked on historical cases and costs linkages, and then came up with financial reasonings and business solutions to reduce costs quarter over quarter by implementing these process changes. All this sounds like a heavy meticulous task to do and so it was but it was made easy with the amazing canteen at Airtel with a super lunch spread and Subway outlet.
More than that, as we know People leave jobs because of their boss but here it was the opposite, I used to go everyday just to work under his guidance since he always had a different approach to data and could spot hidden findings through the excel with an ease. This taught me how to look between the numbers and beyond them, how these numbers mean nothing unless you imagine them in a real market. And this approach is helping me in classes now when I look at numbers and will always do so.
To sum up my internship experience I can only say that those two months have been very enriching for my personal and professional growth. The big brand name is always a star on you resume but what’s not on your resume is the learning and business eye you develop during those two months. The people who surround you from top college, the interns form fellow colleges and a boss who wants you to learn and grow is all anyone can ask from a successful MBA summer internship.