Ayush Patil | XLRI PGDM (HRM) 2025–27 | Summer Intern, Godrej Consumer Products Limited
If you'd asked me before my internship what corporate life looked like, I would've had a fairly predictable answer.
Two months of making PowerPoint slides.
Learning corporate jargon without admitting I didn't understand half of it.
Booking meeting rooms.
Trying not to embarrass myself in front of senior leaders.
And if there was one place I thought interns definitely didn't belong, it was the senior leadership floor.
Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong.
The Two-Minute Conversation I'll Remember The Most
It was one of my last few weeks at Godrej Consumer Products Limited.
I was at my desk, juggling meetings while trying to get a vendor to respond after weeks of follow-ups. Ironically, the person I'd been chasing had finally become available, and I was trying to make the most of that opportunity.
Around then, our Global CHRO walked past my desk.
His cabin was only a few desks away, so we'd crossed paths often enough over the previous two months to exchange a casual "Hi."
This time, he stopped.
"Do you want to go for the Mumbai Indians vs Lucknow Super Giants match today?"
For a second, I thought I'd misheard him.
"I have two tickets, but I have some meetings to attend."
I smiled and said yes.
He asked for my number, transferred both tickets to my BookMyShow account, smiled, and walked away as if this was the most normal conversation in the world.
A few hours later, I made a decision I never thought I'd make.
I skipped the match.
The vendor I'd been following up with for weeks was finally available, and I had an important meeting that I couldn't afford to miss. I passed the tickets on to a colleague instead.
People usually assume that's the surprising part of the story.
It isn't.
The Tickets Weren't The Point
Looking back, I don't remember that day because I missed an IPL match.
I remember it because of what that interaction represented.
On Day 1, the Global CHRO was someone I knew only through the organisation chart.
By the final week of my internship, he was someone who casually stopped by my desk, struck up a conversation and trusted an intern enough to offer him something completely unexpected.
That moment summed up my internship better than any presentation or project milestone ever could.
Hierarchy existed.
But it never stopped people from treating interns like colleagues.
Corporate India Wasn't What I Expected
Before joining GCPL, I had imagined corporate life to be far more hierarchical.
I thought interns spent most of their time observing.
Instead, I found myself contributing.
Within weeks, I was working on building an HR Tech solution, coordinating with vendors, presenting my work to senior leaders and being trusted with responsibilities that actually mattered.
The biggest surprise wasn't that people were friendly.
It was that they genuinely expected interns to question assumptions, own their work and contribute meaningful ideas.
That completely changed how I looked at corporate India.
The Week I Thought My Project Was Falling Apart
Not everything came easily.
About halfway through the internship, I hit a point where my project seemed to become more complicated every day.
On paper, it had sounded straightforward.
In reality, every time I felt I had understood the problem, another stakeholder request, dependency or missing piece of information would appear.
I remember staring at my laptop one evening and wondering whether I had spent weeks building something that would never come together.
Instead of asking me to solve everything, my manager helped me simplify the problem.
We narrowed the scope.
Rather than chasing a perfect solution, we focused on building a strong proof of concept.
That shift changed how I approached not just the project, but work itself.
I stopped trying to impress everyone.
I started focusing on solving one important problem well.
The Best Advice I Didn't Have Before Day 1
If I could go back and speak to myself before the internship, I'd say just one thing:
Perfection is overrated.
Your first draft isn't supposed to be your final draft.
Internships are meant to be iterative.
You build.
You receive feedback.
You improve.
Then you repeat the cycle.
Most of my learning came from that process, not from getting things right the first time.
I Left With More Than An Internship
I'd rate my internship a 10/10.
Not because the Global CHRO gave me IPL tickets.
And not because I had the chance to work on an HR Tech solution.
I'd rate it a 10 because I walked in expecting to be an intern who observed.
Instead, I found mentors who trusted me, leaders who treated me like a colleague, and responsibilities that made me feel like my work genuinely mattered.
The IPL tickets became a great story to tell.
But skipping the match reminded me of something far more valuable.
The best internships aren't defined by the perks you receive.
They're defined by the trust you're given.