AvantGarde » Internship Experience

Summer internship story of Salil Ostwal from 2019 class of MBA, IIT Kanpur

Avant Garde — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 22:16:47 +0000

When I got an offer from Halma India to intern at their Bengaluru office, I was not sure of the industry that I was supposed to deal with, Halma, after all, is a group of a good 50 number of fully owned independently managed companies that build products for different sectors viz. Medical, Environmental, Safety & Infrastructure, and it was only after I joined in, did they assign me to Medicel, an Ophthalmic Surgical Instruments Manufacturing Company.

I was asked to undertake a project, the objective of which was to get a complete market information on competitors, & factors that influence decision making in this market, with an ultimate aim to recommend measures that’ll boost Medicel’s revenue in India.

Once I was given the project, my superiors left it all on me to chalk out an approach and gave complete autonomy to steer the course in these 2 months, the culture at the office couldn’t have been more encouraging.

I started off by understanding the cataract surgery procedure & once I got the basics, especially the application of the Medicel products on to it, I packed my bags and travelled across India from Chennai in the South to Mumbai, Ahemdabad, in the West to Delhi, Amritsar in the North & back to Bengaluru, meeting different OEM’s, distributors & doctors, to understand the dynamics of this market. All the observations made during these deliberations & the inferences that I drew out of it formed the basis of the recommendations that I came up with & the same were presented to the Halma India & the Medicel team, post which there was a discussion on the viabilities of the recommendations & suggestions on how things could have been better,

To sum it up, it’s been a phenomenal experience & I enjoyed every bit of it.

I started off by understanding the cataract surgery procedure & once I got the basics, especially the application of the Medicel products on to it, I packed my bags and travelled across India from Chennai in the South to Mumbai, Ahmedabad, in the West to Delhi, Amritsar in the North & back to Bengaluru, meeting different OEM’s, distributors & doctors, to understand the dynamics of this market. All the observations made during these deliberations & the inferences that I drew out of it formed the basis of the recommendations that I came up with & the same were presented to the Halma India & the Medicel team, post which there was a discussion on the viabilities of the recommendations & suggestions on how things could have been better,

To sum it up, it’s been a phenomenal experience & I enjoyed every bit of it.

A STUDY ON KANPUR CENTRAL RAILWAY STATION

Avant Garde — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 04:00:25 +0000

(This is an extract from the project work of Ishaan Singh (IITK/MBA/17), Kartik Bajaj (IITK/MBA/17),
Meenal Gupta (IITK/MBA/17), and Saikat Chatterjee (IITK/MBA/17) under the supervision of
Professor Rahul Varman, Head, Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, IIT Kanpur
“The five separate fingers are five independent units. Close them and the fist multiplies strength.
This is organization.”
-James Cash Penney
Indian Railways is one of the largest networks in the world, with 8.3 billion passengers travelling from one place to another annually. Not only is the service provided by this primary national mode of transport huge and complex, but also critical. Millions of people rely on this service for travelling from one place to another, whether for work, or for excursions, or any other emergency. It is the primary mode of transport for various important goods across the country like raw materials, oil, food, industrial products and what not. We can say that directly or indirectly, Indian Railways is one crucial factor on which the economy of the country depends. This organization of national importance is made up of various small modules. The efficient working of this organization is possible only with the efficient working of all its subsidiaries. Our project is to study the operations at Kanpur Central Railway Station, which is also a subsidiary organization of the Indian Railways, that records traffic of more than 150,000 passengers, and more than 280 trains a day. There are a plethora of widely varying tasks taking place at the station, from cleaning of the trains to filling up of water, from food being cooked and served in a timely manner to loading various goods in the train, from the exchange of duties of drivers and guards to the readiness of the emergency situations, enormously large number of important tasks simultaneously take place at the station. Through this project, we have tried to understand the defined rules and procedures, problems and paradoxes, challenges and contingencies, so as to get a holistic view of the organization and understand the complications experienced and overcome by the same. We have also tried to apprehend the strengths and weaknesses of the organization through our interaction with various stakeholders associated with it. This study is a tribute to those associated with the Indian Railways, who work hard with passion and pride for the people of our nation, dedicate their life for our safety and security and with efficient hands and ever alert eyes keep the “Lifeline of India” ticking. Indian Railways as an organization runs by defined and codified rules and procedures which are followed throughout the country across the whole network. The organization is divided into divisions and subdivisions with a modular structure based upon clear division of labour. Each and every section is properly organized with defined hierarchy, responsibilities and command of authority yet integrated with each other through continuous exchange of information, timely coordination and working for the common goal of serving the public and industry 24 hours a day,30 days a month, 12 months a year and year after year. “..No matter what happens each one of us knows the kind of responsibility we have and the impact of our committing mistake… we take pride in what we do and what we do showcases our passion about it…..our commitment to serve the public of the country”[Deputy SS (Commercial)] All the divisions have their own set of employees who are skilled at their job responsibility and de ned work schedule and generally work on the same unless any emergency situation occurs when all divisions work as an integrated unit. Training is an essential part of the initial days at job and it focuses on all the areas related to the job profile where each and every employee gets the holistic view of the work functions and engages himself/herself in hands-on training. Thus all the employees get, not only a grasp over the rulebook procedures and written documents but also actively learn through practical exposure. “..In our 108 days of training we learn in detail the way it (Engine) functions and all the technicalities associated with it” [Train Driver] In an organization which is of enormous complexity in terms of the volume of operations it is very critical that all the associates put in their best effort with the best of their knowledge to avert any mishap. Standard codes and rules often help to normalize the decision making procedure so as to react in a time bound manner with high accuracy and precision. From very complex to utter simplistic operations, the organization runs in sync where everyone acts in resonance; which at an end user level delivers a seamless ow of services without flaw on a daily basis. At the time of emergency like accidents or derailment however the scenario changes altogether. “..and all of us work as a team and take decisions just in time so as to reach the spot with all aids as early as possible. All the departments join hands to arrange for every single equipment and coordinate with the rescue team and Administrative starts…” (Station Superintendent) As we wondered how this organization manages so many operations across various departments in a flawless manner every single day, the question that immediately came to our mind was “what is it that makes this organization tick?” There should be something documented or perceived, defined rules or accepted norms or something -it is like an operating system that you cannot directly see or touch but the very presence of it makes the threads and processes work in disciplined and sequenced manner. To get to the root of this query we decided to have a talk with the Station Superintendent Mr. Trivedi, who we expected literally knew each and every aspect of the station and its daily operations. Mr. Trivedi, a middle aged gentleman with a smile on his face leaned back in his armchair and asked us what we are looking for. We told about our observations and findings, told him how we kind of “intruded” into the departments and finally came to our point-” Sir, we saw the same picture everywhere. It is so perfect that it seems artificial but the truth is, it works that way only. What is it that makes it possible?”
Mr. Trivedi seemed to be very pleased to hear this. He laughed and then looking at our faces commented “Well, let me make one thing clear. Not all things are perfect and always work as predicted but the way we all people here handle things every day that is the real thrill”. Meenal asked, “Then sir, are you necessarily saying there are some problems here that need urgent attention?” Mr. Trivedi prompted back “Problems are everywhere. It all depends upon your capacity to get workarounds within your limited framework. Everyone complains and criticizes about so many things but no one bothers to suggest anything constructive.”
Some of the key points as we noted-
1) The organization works with a properly documented and standardized rulebook. All the sections, subsections and divisions have their rules and procedures de ned and explicitly mentioned which is followed by every single associate. The documentation is elaborate and covers various possible scenarios within that department. All the sections train their people with this documentation and no exceptions are made to what is written in the rulebook unless absolute necessity/ emergency. The standards include the operations part, maintenance part, passenger services etc. As an example all the trains running through Kanpur central railway station have assigned preferences. Signaling and Movement section checks the priority of the trains and signals accordingly. Likewise checks and inspections, line work and maintenance, catering and food services –name any department and they have their standardized guidelines.
2) The level of employee engagement, according to him, is fascinating here. People take great satisfaction in the fact that it is their contribution that makes this grand system run. All the employees are fully aware of their job responsibility and it seldom happens that any one of them takes a leave without any serious reason. He emphasized that according to rulebook there are standard rules like all the medical leaves should be
thoroughly veri ed by the Railway hospital and in case of any discrepancy it should be reported immediately. But the rule is seldom required in reality. He said that he has seen people with severe illness reporting in and working with a smile.
3) Problems faced in last couple of years are mainly due to increased number of coaches and trains announced every year and the lack of infrastructure development corresponding to that. Platforms are really less in number as compared to the number of trains crossing through Kanpur Central. This creates a logjam during the peak hours. Increasing the number of coaches in the express and passenger trains creates problems as many of the coaches are left outside the length of the platform. Now work has been started of late to resolve this issue.
4) There are problems regarding the number of vacancies as well as every year it is becoming more
and more difficult to get competent workforce thus creating a massive shortage of workers in every division. As he finished with the detailed discussion on the various issues and work structure existing in Kanpur Central we got a somewhat clear picture of the organization as a whole. “It was great talking to you, Sir” we said. Mr. Trivedi smiled heartily and taking the glass of water from his table said “We face issues, critical and challenging problems and our people solve it real time every day. We all know it here ‘Jo bhi ho bas chakka chalna chahiye’ [Whatever happens, the wheels must run]”. It was late evening, people were rushing- passengers, railway staffs, workers, coolies, vendors; there were frequent announcements, engines were whistling and signals changed from red to green and then turned into red again –and we felt standing and witnessing a great show –an everyday story with ever changing colours and we actually realized what Mr. Trivedi said, ‘the show must go on’.

Winter Internship Experience at Reliance Communication

Avant Garde — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 02:00:23 +0000

I did my internship in Reliance Communication as an HR trainee. It gave an opportunity to work under three pillars of HR i.e. Acquisition & talent, Employee Engagement, and HR operations. As Reliance Communication Indore is the head office of MP Chhattisgarh Region, so it not only provided me an opportunity to get a bird’s eye view of all the offices working under it but also paved a way for me to get an overall perspective of the organization from HR point of view. In HR operations, I got to learn some basics of SAP software used in storing, processing, and extracting employee data set and necessary information of staff, management of leaves, attendance makings, salary dispatching, input of new employee data etc. were some of the functions I got to know. In HR Acquisition and Talent I tried to understand the cycle of internal and external job postings, which starts from authority to recruit (ATR raised by function head), Acceptance to offer (ATO for selecting appropriate candidate to HR head), and finally Employee Code Creation (ECC for the finalized person). I got an opportunity to work in the interview process as well as witness all the procedure involved between a candidate selection and his joining in the company. In HR Engagement I learned about Performance Management System (PMS) which included different performance parameters like Key Result Areas (KRA), individual contribution areas (CRA), learning and development etc. I also learned about the 90 degree feedback model being followed here, target settings, interim review etc. I also got an opportunity to organize some employee engagement functions. Overall it gave me a broad perspective about the HR functioning in an organization.

By: Bhavna Uttamchandani

Winter Internship Experience at GlaxoSmithKline Pharamaceuticals Limited

Avant Garde — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 01:42:29 +0000

As a fresher who has never seen an office, I always dreamt of working for a big brand, attending meetings and taking valuable decisions. I used to think how great it must feel to take decisions for a much followed products like Horlicks, Maggi etc but with these thoughts the doubt of ever being associated with such a product also used to cross my mind, after all there are only hundreds of such products and the people who want to be associated with them are uncountable. Call it a good fortune or God’s grace I got my dream fulfilled in my very first stint. On my first day as I reached the office, my nervousness was taking a toll on me, I had no clue how next one month will turn out for me, what my manager will be like and how will I interact with the experienced people with whom I am going to work on project. As I reached the reception I saw a huge office, soft English music was being played and lot of people were entering the security gates, it all looked like the one I have always imagined. I was asked to wait and soon a young lady came to receive me, I was taken to the waiting room where my manager and his manager came to meet me, “Hi, Ishaan I am going to be your manager and he is my boss, Welcome to the Eltroxin team.” were the first few words of my manager, I was issued a one month gate pass, a temporary system login ID and a cubicle, I was given printed material to read about the brand Eltroxin at 11 am in the morning and I had time till 2 PM which was to be my lunch time for the next 1 month. As I started reading I realised that Eltroxin was the highest earning medicine brand of GSK with the tag of being the first even Indian Brand to generate 100 crore revenue in 1 financial year, I learned that it is the first choice of 90% doctors who prescribe for Hypothyroidism. Now I knew that I have got a big fish to catch and in all honesty I felt that the brand is so big that I am not going to get too much responsibility over the next one month. Guess what I was proved wrong on my very first day, I had just come back from the lunch with my manager and 3 other colleagues when my manager came up to me and said, “Ishaan, today we have a meeting with a PR agency who is going to officer us some proposals to implement for our brand in the upcoming year 2016 and since you are new please come to my cubicle so that I can explain you the positioning of our brand because you will be the only one attending the meeting today.” I was damn excited, this is what I always wanted, soon I had the meeting and for the next seven days I was critically analysing each and every proposal from cost and brand positioning point of view with almost no help from the seniors. Finally after 7 days I shortlisted 23 proposals out of the 55 suggested proposals to go forward with. I gave PPT to the Eltroxin team explaining them the ration behind short listing each and every proposal and with their feedback I finalised 21 of the 23 proposals initially shortlisted. Even today when I think about it, the feeling that all the marketing activities that are happening for a 100 crore yearly revenue generating brand are those that are suggested by me cannot just be expressed in words. One of the PR proposals that I shortlisted was a Hypothyriodism radio Awareness week in January, Implementation of this proposal became my 3 week project. To begin with I was asked to make a concept note whereby I had to mention the roles and responsibilities of Marketing Team, Finance team, Medical Team and Communication Team in conducting this radio initiative. I had to get the proposal approved by all the category heads and as easy as it sounds it took me 4 days to get everyone’s consent on each and every word written in the concept note, I remember tearing of 15 drafts before finalising the one that was signed by everyone. I realised that this method can be changed as it was unnecessarily painful for instance I got the 1^st draft signed my marketing head but medical head found some issues with it, so I had to make a draft 2 and such changing and chopping of content after getting 1 or 2 signs kept happening till the final draft was signed by all. I gave a suggestion of e-draft editing and signing before printing the final draft to be carried out from next time, to my surprise my proposal was accepted and the next concept note for some other brand went through e-signing and editing before finally taking the shape and the process was completed in 3.5 hours. Next the task was to get in touch with 106 Area business managers (ABMs) all across the Indian and to explain them the Radio initiative concept, I was assigned the responsibility of convincing them to visit the top two Endocrinologist of their area and to get them on board to speak about congenital hypothyroidism over the radio, I made a first call and explained the concept, my manager kept listening to the conversation and as I finished I got a reply from the ABM that “the doctor you want me to visit just meets in 30th of the month as today is 9th I will not be able to meet him for next 20 days.” I said fine and hung up the phone. My manager started laughing and said “this is how you are going to conduct the biggest ever radio initiative this country has seen?” I was confused and I gave him the confused look, he sat down and told me that “As a manager the biggest quality you must have is not to take no for an answer unless you have searched all possibilities, That ABM thinks that visiting the doctor before 30th is beyond his capability but you have to make him believe that he can do it, you have to tell him why he can do it and how he can do it whenever he says that it can’t be done.” This was my first lesson and for the next 10 days I gave all convincing skills U had to get biggest doctors were on board and finally I was able to get 86 doctors out of 90 doctors assigned to me at the beginning. Mean while all the ABMS from across the country visited Mumbai for a 3 day yearly meet and in the presence of the president and Vice president of the company I was given the stage to address all the 106 ABMs I was interacting with over the phone, the aim was to give a motivating speech so that we can have all the doctors on board, the result of the speech was 86 out of 90 doctors on board as I have mentioned previously. Finally when the doctors was on board and only 7 days were remaining in my internship I was informed that the communication’s team manger who was responsible for getting the radio station on board has gone for an emergency leave and now I have to talk to 28 radio stations, negotiate for the rates and give them the details of the doctors to call and record their message, I also had to coordinate with them the time at which the doctors were to be called since the doctors like the AIMS director would give us very specific time and date to call, we got a time from 6 pm to 6.10 pm for AIMS doctors and if the radio people couldn’t call in those 10 minutes all the efforts for getting the doctor on board will go in vain and the company will lose the trust of big doctors, this was the most challenging task since Christmas and New year were approaching and thus Radio People were too busy during this period. My fear of this task being too complicated came true when on the first recording day radio jockeys who were supposed to call 33 doctors only called 11 doctors. I was getting calls from all the ABMs that doctor is very angry and they all wanted answers, It was not my fault but of radio jockey’s but it was my loss and companies’ loss not of the radio channel’s. I was losing hope when I remembered what my manager told me one day on the lunch table, he said ”problems are inevitable but there is no problem which doesn’t have a solution” I thought a lot and next day asked all ABMS to themselves go and record the message on their mobile phone and assured them that I will get the radio guys to edit the recording and turn it in to the one that can be played on radio, luckily it worked we got all the recording done ourselves and got them edited to be finally played on radio, my manager told me that from now on all radio initiatives will happen this way. All in all it was an amazing learning experience; I was taken for a lunch on the last day by my team, I built bonds with 106 AMs and with around 20 colleagues. To their credit they gave me too much responsibility for a one month intern and to my luck I was able to justify their decision.

By: Ishaan Singh

Winter Internship “Promorph Solutions Pvt. ltd.”

Avant Garde — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 09:30:58 +0000

Although many believe that winter internship is a nice opportunity for the people with less exposure in corporate world to live and feel the culture, but I had different plans, I opted for a Start Up and luckily got a chance to work in a SIDBI incubated Company at IIT Kanpur itself.

I was rejoiced to have a chance to enjoy my stay (during Vacations) at IIT, the place full of opportunities, but at the same time, was feeling envy of my friends who decided to do their internships at their home towns. But as they say, to achieve something you have to leave something, everything has its own pros and cons but believe me it was no bad deal at all.

I was given a profile of business development, and to mention that “profile” is too short a term to describe the horizon of responsibilities you are expected to fulfill in a Start Up. Although luckily I had one of my batch mates as my team member (Team of two). So coordination required to achieve the desired goals in such a short time was not an issue.

Now without pouring in more words I will directly come to first day of the internship.

Oh…. I am sorry there is something before the first day as well – “Day Zero”, Yes we received a call a day before our joining, got a briefing mail about the product and were asked to make a sales presentation by using our MBA Insights. We reached the office next day after working on the task whole night and somehow managed to stand up to the expectations.

At the closing of ‘day one’ when we were thinking about the week long training session beginning from next day (supposedly), came another surprise: next task, “I want you to know the right approach for working in a Start Up, for this you are required to read a book and report after 24 hours” said our mentor and trainer (I will speak more about the person towards my closing lines) 300 pages in one day was not exactly what I was used to, still gave my best and reported back with 1/3 part still remaining. But thankfully our mentor did not expect us to complete it either, and with a loud remark “This internship is not going to be easy” our training session started. We were told we could enjoy the work from home facility on which I started dreaming of the extra activities available because of the time flexibility available (again supposedly).

Happiness to have the freedom of working according to my time disappeared at the pace it came. Soon the task made us forget about the normal concept of 8 hours working schedule and we started working on double shifts to complete our basic training, so that we could start with our final goals. With the tasks flowing rapidly and data being collected in abundance I found how important can a simple tool like “Trello” or “Evernote” become if you know how to use the resources efficiently.

After the completion of our training sessions at Kanpur it was time to know the market sentiments as well as analyze the difficulties and expectations of our expected customers. For this we decided to observe the market space personally and planned to visit parts of Uttar Pradesh, National Capital Region (NCR), Punjab and Haryana and further divided the demographics into various market segments to have a holistic view and decide upon the strategies to make our product more valuable for our customers.

Very excited to meet the Directors and Chancellors of various educational institutions, (as the product is developed to improve the education sector of the nation) we prepared the agenda and planned the route map in which we were to cover the prospects of our study.

But we forgot to visualize and involve the most important person in the whole process

Although thankfully the company, being incubated at SIDBI, IIT Kanpur and also being awarded by MHRD, along with our personal skills helped to execute our visits smoothly.

After completing the first phase at Uttar Pradesh the next stop was NCR region and with most of my friends staying at Delhi, I thought it would be a great week and opportunity to enjoy few joyous evenings along with the work. But on the first day itself when; while returning from work, I promised my friends to meet them after a 20 min nap and woke up straight in the next morning with about 15 missed calls on my cell phone, it was clear “This internship is really not easy”. But thankfully I had some great time with my friends on Sunday.

And also, we got a chance to visit our homes, as the last phase included the market study at our hometowns.

With the completion of our visits, we learnt how geographical demographics and other market segmentation can bring in changes to the way your product is perceived and also how expectations of customers may vary in spite of belonging to the same segment of industry. We also learnt how to implement theoretical knowledge to get useful results and at the same times how different the theories can be from the practical situations.

In the summarizing lines, I would like to thank the company for giving us the chance to work with them and providing a great learning platform. I would also like to thank our Guide and Mentor who not only trained us but helped us to overcome the problems we faced and kept us motivated by adroitly using reprimands and appraisals.

By- Manpreet Singh

Summer Internship experience in Japan

Avant Garde — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 22:10:53 +0000

This summer I had the pleasure of doing my summer internship at Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan. The internship program was offered under the flagship of Sakura Science Program sponsored by Japan Science and Technology Agency. Every year Japanese Govt. invites 50 students from Asia for internship in various universities. The idea is to promote higher education and Japanese culture among other countries.

Kyushu Institute of Technology lies in Fukuoka prefecture in Japan. The nearest airport is in Fukuoka City. The distance between the airport and the institute is about 65km. The Kyushu Institute of Technology campus located in Hibikinokita is specialized in robotics technology. I did my internship in Wagatsuma Laboratory of the institute under Prof. Hiroaki Wagatsuma. They are working in the field of artificial intelligence so that they can develop robots which can actually take intelligent decisions.

My first day at the institute was very hectic. But I didn’t know that my next few days were going to be even more hectic. The official working hours are from 10 AM to 6 PM. But the kind of work culture which I saw in the institute was very surprising. People in the institute used to work from 10 AM to 12 midnight. The interesting thing which I found is that they do not enforce these long working hours on to students or faculty. But they have created a work culture where people feel ashamed if they leave from work early. So when the new people (including me) join the institute, they themselves follow the same work culture.

In the first half of my first day, I was introduced about the Kyutech campus, various laboratories in the institute and the kind of work going on in these laboratories. I was also introduced about the objectives of my internship. Then in the 2^nd half of the day I was introduced with basics of CAD and hence feeding the design code into the machine, I printed some samples using the 3D printer. The idea was to learn some basic concepts which can further be used to work in live industry projects.

Being a computer engineer and a management student, this was a bit unusual and difficult for me. I had to work in two projects. The first project was to create a multi legged robot. The movement of motor was to be used to drive the parts of robot and make its legs move like a human. The second project was to make a security application for NAO (a humanoid robot). Since I am a management student, they also included process management and quality control as a part of my project which would be relevant for my career.

The first project was about a multi legged robot having 8 legs. It also had a motor which was to be run by a battery. The mechanism was to convert the rotation of motor to drive the legs of robot so that it walks like a human. The work was divided into three teams. The objective of the first team was to give dimensions of various components required for the robot. These dimensions were calculated using the theories of mechanics. The objective of second team was to design components in CAD using the dimensions prescribed by Team 1. The CAD design was used to print the components using a 3D printer. The objective of Team 3 was to assemble the components printed by Team 2 into the actual robot. I was part of all these three teams where my work was technical. But as part of process management, I had to coordinate between these three teams for efficient utilization of time. As a part of quality control, my job was also to ensure that the final components printed by Team 2 are of good quality for efficient assembly of components by Team 3.

The second project was to develop a security application for NAO (Humanoid Robot). This application would help NAO to remember and recognize the familiar faces. The robot was to be kept in a corner in the laboratory. Using movement and sound tracker, the robot tries to detect a face. If the robot finds a familiar face, it greets the person. But if an unfamiliar person enters the laboratory when no other familiar person is present, the robot shouts “Security Breach” continuously. The application was built using some inbuilt functions and coding using C++.

My daily schedule was to work on both of these projects. I also had two hours of class sessions daily. These classes helped me in learning the theoretical concepts in robotics and artificial intelligence. These concepts were highly used in both of the projects.

On weekends, as a part of program to know about Japanese culture, I visited many temples and museums with my professor. The visit to historical city of Hiroshima was just great. The experience of eating at Indian restaurants was just amazing (though the food was very expensive). I also had the pleasure of doing journey in bullet trains (I hope we too get bullet trains in India pretty soon). And the adventures of Mt. Fuzi and scuba diving just amplified the great fun I had in Japan. I also experienced a typhoon day when winds blew at 150km/hr (Ever since I entered in Japan, everybody was just saying that typhoon is coming which gave me the impression that “Winter is Coming” as in Game of thrones). The experience of getting lost in a humid bamboo forest without food, water and map for a whole day in search of the beach was also very adventurous. Overall, it was a fun internship. The training was rigorous but the historical and cultural things that I learnt the adventures I experienced and the friends I made (including a get together and the Cricket Tournament in Japan with Indian community) will always be remembered by me for a very long time.

Gaurav Girdhar

MBA 2014-16

Summer Internship-”Juniper Networks India Pvt. Ltd.”

Avant Garde — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 12:24:41 +0000

I completed my summer internship at Juniper Networks India Pvt Ltd at New Delhi from May 18, 2015 to July 17, 2015 as a Field Marketing intern. My experience with Juniper has been extremely fulfilling and enriching.

Juniper Networks was founded in 1996 by Mr. Pradeep Sindhu, an IIT Kanpur alumnus. One of the leading companies in network innovation, Juniper has headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. The Juniper product portfolio majorly offers network routing, switching and security solutions to two broad domains:

1. Enterprise/Commercial domain: it consists of various verticals such as government, education, manufacturing, health, web 2.0 and various other segments.

2. Service providers: these are the service provider telecommunication companies like Airtel, Vodafone etc.

Juniper Networks India Private Ltd is an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) which sells its products through channel partners and distributors. Juniper partners reach out to the customers and extend Juniper’s footprint and also provide system integration. To do this the partners need to be brought on board not only as a channel to sales but also as a system integrator where they deploy people on the ground to install and commission the network.

Juniper along with selling equipment also sells services like professional services to help the partners in designing and implementation. While the partners are at the front end of the process, Juniper provides expert support in marketing as well as in sales, presales and post sales in services.

During my two month internship duration, I was assigned a project on Lead generation and Partner enablement. My role was to study the lead generation process at Juniper and identify the problems and make recommendations based on the best practices followed in the industry. I had a chance to meet with the telemarketing team which was carrying out the lead generation process for Juniper. Based on the interaction with the telemarketing team and the lead generation team inside Juniper, I was able to understand the nitty gritties of marketing activities for demand generation.

For the other part of my project on partner enablement, I had to engage with the partners and get their feedback on partner enablement activities in practice and discuss with them any improvements for the process. I got in touch with various Juniper partners and had a wonderful opportunity to interact with people from various companies. I also got an opportunity to attend one of the roadshow events by Juniper for partner enablement which had me share the place with a lot of people from the industry- both inside and outside Juniper.

Throughout my internship tenure, I got to learn a lot about B2B Marketing and Sales, especially for a networking industry and how things work out in the real world. All the events and meetings with various people made my job really dynamic and interactive. Being a fresher, this was my first experience of the corporate world and it was overwhelming. The work culture at Juniper is really good and for the brief time that I spent in the office, I became a part of that culture and the organization, receiving all the necessary support from my manager and other colleagues at every point of time. It has been a lifetime experience for me with immense learning.

Chhavi Kataria

MBA 2014-16