“The value of an idea lies in the using of it”, observed the great man who gifted mankind its first electric bulb. However, going by the rate of entrepreneurial ventures in our country, the given observation wouldn’t mean much. The ratio of MBA grads opting to start a company on their own is very insignificant. Why can’t two years of gruelling schedule at a premium B school with regular dosage of some fancy theories, tools and incisive analysis of land mark case studies prepare you to build your own dreams! I was about to find my answers in the next two eventful months.
We would now scroll back to the day where it all started, i.e. the first day of my summer internship program. With a spring in my step and butterflies in my stomach I got ready to report at the office at sharp 10.00 am. The sultry summers of Kolkata and the sight of buses loaded much beyond their “design capacity” somehow dampened the initial euphoria. Though I had been to Kolkata before but didn’t quite experience the public transport at the special (read office) hours. I was standing in a queue and when the bus came I got squeezed inside without moving a muscle. Fighting valiantly just to be able to stand inside the bus, I got some useful tips on what not to do while travelling in an overcrowded bus. Those actually came in very handy for the rest of internship days, more so because my work involved a lot of field trips.
The first glimpse of my new office was yet another dampener. It was a simple one situated in a quiet corner of a busy street. Neither had it the jazziness nor the impeccable interiors associated with an IT multinational. Here I would like to mention that before making a way into MBA, I had been a member of the elite Indian IT club (read a run-of-the-mill IT employee). Once inside the office, after the cursory introductions, I was briefed about the project and the stint began in full flow.
After the first week, I started getting a hang of the sweat and the heat. Moreover, neither the not-so-ideal bus ride nor the office settings mattered much. Those things which mattered were better than my expectations. The staff members at the office were very friendly and looked forward to any help I could ask for. From sharing lunch to celebrating birthdays to brainstorming sessions concerning the critical issues, we had it all.
I also got the taste of working in a flat organization, wherein you could just barge in to the rooms of senior management and get your lessons right. There is always the opportunity to get involved in various other facets of the organization apart from the project assigned. Although I was a marketing intern, but while working on my project, I had to constantly get my hands dirty with issues involving finance and core operations. At the risk of sounding clichéd, I would vouch for the fact that each day was a learning experience. Those two months probably gave me some of the best lessons of my life up till now.
An important prerequisite for my project was to meet as many prospective clients as possible. It involved usage of direct marketing through e-mails and phone calls for fixing up appointments I got to learn the hard way that time is the most important resource people have these days and making them squeeze out even a little part of it could be a herculean task. I suddenly started regretting all those encounters with sales persons’ wherein I had snapped or not behaved appropriately without any fault of theirs.
Going a step further, when you actually meet and interact with the target customers (herein comes the field trips and the frequent usage of the public transport), you realize no matter how well you know the product, their intricate queries might stumble you quite a few times. Also, when you don’t have a big brand name to fall back upon, chances are slim that they would actually listen to you in the ‘air time’ they allocate to you. The art of approaching people and getting them engaged in what you are talking is a big thing in itself. In due course of time, I could get the hint of improvements’ I was making with a significant difference in the manner in which the customers reacted and the end result of it.
Day in and day out we had to confront with a three faced sword, i.e. a start up company, minus a brand name, trying to make its mark in a sensitive sector like healthcare where trust is of utmost importance with a very novel product concept. But looking back, I realize that the hiccups we faced made the work more challenging and the takeaways’ and learning’s more concrete, giving in its wake, memories of a lifetime!
The internship experience at a start up taught me that the task of giving shape to your dreams and building it brick by brick is indeed very painstaking and involves considerable risk. This might be the reason why people decide to get hired by someone to build their dream instead of building their own. But as has been quoted by Dolly Parton, "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain!”
