My Summer Internship Experience At Pidilite | Ft. Shikhar Srikantiah, IIM Shillong

The distribution system at Pidilite is unique and more or less resembles a hub-and-spoke model. The virtual field experience gave me an opportunity to connect with more than 100 stakeholders in the value chain and helped me understand the impact they are creating for Pidilite's business as a whole.

While my first project was based on market sizing of an emerging brand in Pidilite's portfolio, my second assignment was completely different where I was part of a pilot launch of an app for Pidilite dealers. Both projects gave me an opportunity to understand consumer sentiments, understand the rationale behind certain preferences, foster relationships with field teams by empowering them to take critical decisions and how we as marketers can bring about an impact in the life of our stakeholders. Being able to transform the traditional consumer mindset to a digitally accepting mindset was a herculean task but nevertheless paid off. It felt extremely satisfying to contribute in a successful pilot launch of the dealer's app which will now be adopted by almost all dealers within the Pidilite distribution network.

Learning the nuances of Pidilite's business from the Leadership team and getting to see it up close through my projects was a great value-adding experience. Trying to do justice to 2 projects within a span of 6-7 weeks was very challenging yet completely worth it. The overall learning was holistic and involved all aspects an MBA student must focus on for growth in their career.

Our Chief Human Resources Officer was right on point when he said that market visits can never be replaced. Even as those words ring true, the virtual setting gave us a completely different flavour and a new dimension to problem-solving. The approach changed but the overall learning outcome remained the same.

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