Being a fresher I was eager to gain work experience in some form or the other. As soon as the process at my campus started I wanted to get placed. But I wanted to keep my options open. Hence, I reached out to my sister who was working at an NBFC in Kolkata. She asked her boss and the HR at the company if there was a vacancy for an MBA Intern. Although the request was placed well in advance, the company was willing to have a look at my resume. After sending across my resume and a couple of follow ups, I received my offer letter. I was offered the position of a trainee in the core treasury department of Magma Fincorp Ltd. The company was headquartered in Kolkata and that’s where I had to intern. The good thing was I was getting the chance to Intern from my city and live comfortably once again with my parents for a period of 2 months. However, I was not offered any stipend, something I had to come to terms with when compared to my fellow batch-mates who were all getting paid internships.
Before joining, I did a thorough research about the company and its website and got a pretty good idea about the company and the various services it offers. However, on the first day I was coincidentally asked to do the same and also study the audit report of the company and investor presentations for the next few days till I got a clear understanding of the company and its functions. While reading the material given to me I’d look around the workplace only to find some 200 odd people working around me with very heavy work load. “This is probably how NBFCs work”, I thought. My mentor too didn’t have the time to interact with me much in my first week of internship.
In my second week I asked my mentor what work or project I was supposed to work on. After making me wait for what seemed like eternity, he sent me an excel sheet and gave me hard copy files containing loan sanction letters. I was supposed to go through the sanction letters and read all the terms and conditions that came with it. That was heavy reading, again. Each sanction letter contained between 50 to 150 terms and conditions. There were sanction letters from 25 odd banks. After finishing all the reading that was given to me I had to update all the terms and conditions in the excel sheet that was sent over. This took up 50% of my internship due to the complexity and comprehensiveness of the files. But by the end of it I knew all the terms and conditions that a NBFC has to accept and follow in order to avail credit facilities from banks.
After doing the above, I would make regular updates in the company’s file with respect to balance outstanding in loan accounts, changes in rate of interest and the like while working on my project at the same time. My mentor was very busy with his already heavy work load but he made time occasionally to interact with me and help clear out my doubts. At the end of 8 weeks, I received a positive feedback from my mentor and the other employees with whom I had to work. I was definitely more experienced than I was when I had first entered that office.
