AVENIR’15 – The Annual Business Conclave

DoMS, IIT Roorkee: The Annual Business Conclave- AVENIR‘15, of Department of Management Studies (DoMS), IIT Roorkee, came to an end on Sunday evening. The two-day business conclave is held every year to give an opportunity to the students of DoMS, IIT Roorkee to interact with eminent intellectuals of the corporate world. This year it was held on 22^nd and 23^rd of August.

Dr. Santosh Ragnekar- Head of Department of Management Studies, IIT Roorkee, addressed the students and opened the two days business conclave- AVENIR for 2015. Prof. D K Nauriyal, Dean of Student Welfare IIT Roorkee, spared time from his busy schedule to honour his presence, for lighting the lamp, as our Honorable Chief guest for AVENIR‘15. The most important advice for the students of DoMS IIT Roorkee from the chief guest was to use the energy in a productive way and work for the society.

AVENIR‘15 presented by THDC India Limited, would not have been such a big success without the help of our sponsors namely, Oriental Bank of Commerce, SoulFlower, Central Bank Of India, Hotel Center Point, and IdeasMakeMarket.com.

Normally, any type of session is expected to be boring with a number of lengthy presentations, but sessions of AVENIR‘15 proved to be highly interactive. The central theme of the business conclave- ‘Understanding the needs and trends of emerging Global Business Landscape’, was clearly addressed by ten guest speakers who are among the well-known figures of the corporate world. Each one of them threw light into new dimensions of the future business world. They even provided a safe way, carved by their experience in the business world, for the students of DoMS, IIT Roorkee, in order to ensure their success in the fast growing business world.

Day one was started by the fruitful session of Mr. Alvis Lazarus- Social Entrepreneur, Ex-India Head Supply Chain Operations at Flipkart which was followed by Mr. Saif Iqbal- Head of Innovation at Snapdeal.com, Mr. Gaurav Mehta- CMO, OLX South Asia, Mr. Ankur Jain- Director Training, Development & Quality at PolicyBazaar.com, and Dr. Deepak Singh - Director-HR, KPMG. Enthusiasm level of students could be seen clearly by the number of questions asked during the session. The curiosity to learn more about the business world was high enough to be seen clearly on the second and the last day of AVENIR‘15.

Day two was enlightened by five guest speakers - Ms. Sheela Nambiar- Director of Inside Sales at IBM India, Mr. Rajesh Dhuddu- Vice President, Quatrro Global Services, Mr. Sandeep Mathur- President of New Projects at Greenply, Mr. Abhay Kapoor- Associate Vice President Escorts Limited, and last speaker of AVENIR‘15 was Mr. Rajesh Pednekar- Head of Distribution at Pfizer.

Overall, the session was a great success; all the students have found value in the topics chosen for discussion by different guest speakers. In this two days business conclave, students tried to utilize the opportunity to full extent. A continuous learning process is required for keeping us updated with the latest news of the business world and equipped with the latest technology to guarantee our success. AVENIR’15 proved to be a catalyst to accelerate the learning process of the students of DoMS, IIT Roorkee. Taking its benefit into account, the tradition of the annual business conclave will be carried forward in the years to come.

Bhaskar Ballabh Saikia

MBA 1^st year

Internship Diaries #13

Nitin Agarwal

Petronas

My internship experience at global oil and gas giant Petronas was enriching and engrossing. Working closely with the Marketing & branding team for Petronas India, I learned about its existing value chain, competition landscape and product portfolio.

With constant support and guidance from the team, I was able to design and execute key branding campaigns for Petronas, positivly affecting sales in Western region. These learning would go a long way in paving my understanding for the industry. 

Internship Diaries #12

Karan Mittal

MiddleEarth HR

My project is mainly on Branding Strategy and analyzing the brand awareness and brand perception among the customers. I analyzed the various communication channels (touch points) of Middle Earth HR and its competitors and prepared the report of what the future actions must be taken so that company can position itself in an effective way.

 I worked on the Newsletter of the company. I worked on the design, content generation, and content aggregation and involve alumni for sharing their thoughts on certain topics in newsletter. We prepared the new format of newsletter where we had decided to have less number of informative articles, i.e. four, the information regarding the new programs that company have launched during the month, the calendar of the programs that company is conducting, the early bird offers to attract more customers and the CEO message to represent the working culture and position of the organization. The objective of publishing newsletter in new format is to do branding for the company in an effective manner, to build customer relationship, to increase enquires, to announce new products and early bird offers.

I worked on the minor project where to analyze measurement of brand perception and brand awareness. The main purpose of the study is to determine the brand image, perception, attitudes and behavior of the target audience with regard to the corporate Middle Earth HR brand as well as the products and personality of the Middle Earth HR. This also denotes the purchasing pattern of customers towards the brand.

Internship Diaries #11

Hridayjyoti Thakuria

Foodpanda

I interned with foodpanda India during the summer. I was a member of their sales and marketing division in Pune. The 2 months spent at foodpanda was a great opportunity to learn about the E-Commerce industry in general and the rapidly growing food industry. 

We worked closely with the Lead Generation team in analyzing new business opportunities. Our main roles and responsibilities include – Managing CRM activities, Lead generation for new clients in the food industry, customer mapping in different areas, and data integration for newly acquired subsidiaries. Lead Generation work involved interacting with clients and bringing inbound leads and outlet extension clients onboard. 

I also performed customer mapping of different areas on the basis of key parameters like conversion rates to aid the sales team in strategically targeting new markets. Other than these activities we were also responsible for integrating the customer database of recently acquired companies with the company database. 

Overall the 2 months spent at foodpanda was a really enriching experience which allowed me to broaden my knowledge base and gave me valuable insights into the industry.

Internship Diaries #10

Pinku Borah

Soulflower

It is always wonderful to get an opportunity to work in a domain (Marketing & Business Development) what I envisioned doing in future, and my belief is strengthened through my journey here at Soul flower. The first two to three days were very insightful – knowing more about Soul flower, what the brand stands for, its strategy, the concept of Spa@Home, the experiential nature of the products and the business channels.

My first project started with detail analysis of customers and reviewers in online platform Amazon.in through which I get to know much about how E-commerce firm  like Amazon works with vendors and what kind of strategy a firm should follow to delight their customers who likes buying online.

I am glad to do my summer internship in soulflower because of the wonderful opportunities to work in multiple profiles. The pricing strategy project, where I got an opportunity to come up with a strategy to launch our product in new market. And next the creations of order generation template and vendor registration form in which I constantly visited factory and got a real time view of how various products of Soulflower are manufactured.

The internship as a whole made me business oriented, I got to learn more about how corporate works. My stint at Soulflower improved traits in me like persistence, confidence and responsiveness. It is truly a wonderful experience of working directly under the guidance of the Managing Director of the company who have motivated and encourage me to successfully complete every task assign to me.

Internship Diaries #9

Abhinandan Singh

Middle Earth HR

I had the opportunity to be intern at Middle Earth HR, a company working in field of HR and Leadership certification. The company is leader in Asia and ranks 7^th globally in terms of candidates certified per year. The internship was in marketing domain under which I had to work on two projects. Major Being “Strategy and Implementation of social media strategy” and minor was “Analysis of communication channels for brand positioning”. While working on these projects I was part of a larger group of interns from reputed B Schools like IIM Raipur,NIMS,IMT etc. The focus was to make significant contribution not only through the individual project but also as a team to the larger project that we were assigned. For example the minor project was part of a larger project “Branding”, with each intern working on different aspects of it.

The concept of two individual projects as part of a larger was unique in itself. Not only did it provide me an opportunity to hone my skills and be self-dependent through individual project but also gave me an experience of collaborating ideas and efforts for a larger goal. I was assigned a mentor with whom I could consult and take help in case of confusion. The mentor also reviewed my work before it was presented to the CEO in each weekly meeting. In case of differences in opinion every intern was given full discretion to justify his/her ideas rather than directly discarding them. Often a mutually agreeable solution was reached through brainstorming.

While working on the major project I started with study of competitors to understand their industry specific use of social media for promotion as well as to gain customers .The study was followed by segmentation of customers and their frequency of use of different social media platforms. Also each platform was segmented according to the purpose they could serve. As the final outcome, strategy and roadmap was laid down for each platform which included calendar, targets and promotional strategy.

The minor project required study of each communication channel through which the brand was being communicated to potential customers. These channels ranged from emails and website to certification programs being conducted. Each channel was to be analyzed for consistency of brand’s positioning. The final output was a list of suggestions for improving consistency of brand positioning along with analysis of existing setup.

The best part about working in a stat-up or a small organization is the quick implementation of suggested ideas and access to CEO or top officials. I enjoyed both these benefits and thus I am content with the opportunity I got.

Internship Diaries #8

Arjun Gaur
Jakson Group

I was fortunate enough to have been offered the summer internship programme with Jakson Group. My internship was with the GenSet business of the group. They are currently the market leaders in the business, especially in the medium and high powered product ranges. 

The aim of the project assigned was to develop a strategy for the group to enter the Very Low power Segment. As a Market Research intern, my job was to do surveys in some selected areas of the NCR and UP, perform the fieldwork and analyse the date with respect to all the three parties associated with the business, namely the Manufacturer, the Dealer and the Customer. In all, it helped me to get an idea about the existing network of Jakson and its principle rivals. 

The project involved a lot of traveling and a hectic schedule and understanding the market and client of a product that was more of a B2B type. I was able to see a clear difference between it and a B2C product with respect to Branding, Advertising, Promotion and the Marketing Strategy as a whole. 

Again, I was fortunate enough to have an IIT Roorkee alumnus as my mentor during the period, who guided me right from the start and took utmost interest into the project. He made sure that I was provided with all the necessary resources during my association with them.

Internship Diaries #7

Nishant Mogha

Ruplee iPay Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Ruplee is a mobile payment solution that describes itself as the Smart New Age Way to Pay. You can pay at restaurants directly with your smartphone. It eliminates the necessity to carry credit cards and cash. Also, it removes the hassle to carry your wallet, entering pins manually and keeping manual receipts. 

You can also keep a track of your payment history and monitor your spending. Built by payment and security experts, Ruplee is very secure to use as all your credit/debit card data is safely stored and encrypted. Payments can only be authorized once you enter your CVV and 3D secure pin.

I joined Ruplee as a management intern in the Product Development team, though I was also exposed to work in Digital Marketing, Offline Marketing & Operations. As part of the PD team, I was responsible for delivering the Analytics Dashboard provided to the merchants. I analyzed the requirements & created a detailed design document. I worked closely with the development team to deliver the product on time.

As part of the Marketing team, I worked on the following areas-

• Content Seeding on various online platforms - In content seeding, I was exposed to online platforms like Reddit, Quora, Hacker News, Hacker Street India.
• Email Marketing- In email marketing, my role was to design & editing of HTML Emails, Sending campaign emails & tracking the response of customers to the mailers. Also, I had done A/B testing for their email campaigns and worked single handedly with third party service providers to run different campaigns.
• In App Marketing/ Incent & Non- Incent campaigns – I was responsible to handle Incent & Non Incent campaigns for marketing. I analyzed the campaign services of different service providers available in the market & consulted Ruplee on the best services available in the market for them. As part of this activity, I handled end to end execution of the campaign with 2 service providers simultaneously and analyzed the conversion from both parties. Prepared a detailed report on various aspects of these campaigns for running future campaigns with these parties. While performing this job I got to understand a lot about different marketing services available in marketing & insights about the In App marketing.
• Online Competitions – I was responsible for running 2 online competitions for Ruplee to increase the reach to customers.
• Facebook & Twitter page handling – I was responsible for daily facebook & twitter posts and handling customer queries. Also, my job was to increase twitter page reach for the company. I was successful in bringing around 1300 followers from around 50 followers on their twitter page.
• Push Notifications – Also, my task included sending daily push notifications to all their customers.

In offline marketing, I was involved in running a corporate tie up program for the company and LBBD campaign.

Apart from the above roles, I had done competitive analysis of the company & presented it to top management.  Also, given presentation to third party service providers on tools & services used by the company

Internship Diaries #6

Wadhonkar Pavankumar D

Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Limited

It was indeed a great opportunity for me to get summer internship offer from Coca-Cola and it proved to be a wonderful experience. The outcome of the internship was a thorough project on ‘Forklift Productivity Improvement’, as a part of Operational Excellence department of the company. The project gave me an opportunity to implement my learnings in the two important nuances of Operations Management i.e. Supply Chain Management and Productivity Improvement. Implementation of the project in the period of internship itself, gave me chance to interact with personnel from various departments and levels in and out of the company, and most importantly a sense of fulfilment. The overall experience was very enriching and gave me immense confidence by the end of 2 months.

Internship Diaries #5

Rahul Dogra

Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd.

This summer I interned with Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. at their Sothern Regional Office, Chennai. I worked on a project called ‘Beyond LPG Sales’ in the market research domain.

On the very first day of my internship, I reported at the Southern Regional Office (SRO) of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd.(BPCL) in Chennai. There were two more interns who were also assigned the same mentor as I was. After a general introduction, our mentor explained us what exactly is Beyond LPG programme of BPCL. Beyond LPG is an innovative concept of value added service according to which, not only LPG cylinder is delivered, along with it the products as per the customers’ preferences are delivered at their door steps. The products includes home appliances, geysers, water purifiers, kitchen wares, kitchen utensils, soaps, detergents, gas stove, etc. are delivered to the customers. After a detailed discussion, our mentor told us that we should first understand the whole business of LPG and Beyond LPG and then decide which part of the ‘Beyond LPG Sales’ we want to  work on.

The next day we went to the bottling plant of BPCL which is in the outskirts of Chennai. After a local train ride of about one and half hour, we reached the plant. At the plant, we were received by the Manager (Operations) who guided us into his office. There he explained us how the demand of LPG is met by their supplies and what kind of software tools they employ so as to make the flow of the process smooth. After this introductory talk, we went to visit the plant. There the process engineer explained us all the steps which are taken from unloading the empty cylinders from the Lorries, check the quality of the cylinders and then fill them again with LPG so as to load into other Lorries who delivered those cylinders to the distributor. With this our visit to LPG bottling plant concluded. The next day, I went to a BPCL distributor with one of the sales officer and understood the whole processes of the Beyond LPG business.

After these two visits, I went to SRO and after having a detailed discussion with my mentor, I decided that I will take a project in the market research domain of ‘Beyond LPG Sales’. My task was to conduct a market survey so as to gain insights into the aspects like what BPCL distributors were selling in ‘Beyond LPG’ segment, what kind of strategies they were using to sell the Beyond LPG products, what kind of problems they were facing, etc.

After developing a preliminary questionnaire and taking data of the distributors of Chennai, I started visiting the distributors. I visited a number of distributors, both in the city and in the outskirts of Chennai. Between these visits, I also used to report once or twice to the office and report my mentor about the progress. So after visiting a substantial number of distributors, I completed my survey and submitted the report to my mentor. I also had a discussion with my mentor about the ideas that could be employed so as to boost ‘Beyond LPG’ sales. This marked the completion of my project.

This was really a great learning experience in the sales and market research domain for me. The biggest challenge that I faced was of language but with immense support of my mentor, I was able to overcome this challenge and complete my project successfully.

Internship Diaries #4

Sheena Chaudhary

McCann Summer Intern

My summer internship was at McCann, Delhi along with my two batch mates Kartik Reddy & Vikrant Kanwar. McCann is an advertising firm headed by Parsoon Joshi, Asia-Pacific Head of McCann Erikson. I was very happy to see the enthusiasm of my mentors and my colleagues which motivated me to perform and give a best shot in every task. Mentors were found to be very creative and always asked to give inputs in all the live projects. Sometimes they appreciated, sometimes they told to dig in more, during the times when I couldn’t think of the idea or approach for the problem, they never criticized in-fact they boosted to go out of the box and think something I never thought of. Indeed I did think of something extraordinary. McCann was not the typical 9-5 job; it was so much interesting that I worked on weekends if it was required. As a team of three, we were given individual and group tasks like doing market research, designing the field surveys to conducting it for the client. We also worked across various sectors like Aviation, Telecom, and Fertilizers which helped me to get better understanding of how marketing takes place in all these sectors in accordance with client’s needs.

My main area was on research and making strategic digital approach for projects. I have also worked on various social platforms and gained the knowledge of content marketing and various marketing campaigns companies conduct to rebrand or recreate its image by satisfying its vision statements. Apart from learning I have made various connections inside and outside the team, People were quite friendly over there, we used to discuss almost everything in no time. One of the guys used to give us free snacks when he saw us working late. It might seem as a small gesture but a very thoughtful of him. Working culture was truly an exception; you may wear a casual that was quite a big relief. We also worked with other interns from IIFT and IIMs, it was great knowing them and working where we used to help each other in given tasks.

Internships are great to know yourself in way if you fit in that particular sector or you want to choose something else.  My internship made me sure of my decision over taking marketing as my specialization and to grow and excel in this wonderful field. Marketing is not just STP+ 5P (Packaging is recently added), It is what everyone knows but yet can’t put in words, it is somewhat intangible but with means of tangible resources we can reach out to our target audience before our competitors do. My advice is that always keep your peers and learning hand in hand so that you won’t compromise over the whole experience of internship.