My first internship taught me many lessons: Abhijeet Parmar

Jindal Global Business School

I am studying in Jindal Global Business School pursuing my five-year integrated BBA+MBA and have completed my first semester. In Jindal Global Business School, eight internships are mandatory. We have to complete eight internships in five years of study.

So I decided to utilise my two-month vacation between semesters and did a one-month internship at the well-known air cooler company, Symphony Ltd.

I did my internship in Sales & Marketing; a part of my internship also included Logistics. This was my first internship and it taught me a lot.

I was very excited when I got internship in this company because this company holds a very big-name in the air cooler market. On my first day, the HR department chief as well as AGM (HR) welcomed me with so much respect and enthusiasm. I was bit afraid at that time but the HR department and my colleagues made me feel at home and I started working comfortably. My first internship experience was very good and learnt lot of things that will help me in my future.

At first, I started working in the Marketing department of the firm under the guidance of AGM. I learnt a lot of things from my colleagues like how to prepare attractive brochures containing all the information of the product so that customer gets complete information regarding it and how to make eye-catching TV commercials to show your product as unique.

Basically, a company wants to convert its product into premium product and they do innovation too. So now question comes, “how to sell this premium product on high price”, as competitors are already selling same product at extremely low price.

I learnt that how to sell expensive product despite tough competition with creative advertising as well as innovative marketing ideas.

Symphony air cooler has a good reputation in the international market too, so I learnt a little bit of international sales in my internship like how to get leads of distributors in foreign countries and how to sell our products in international markets through various marketing and branding tools. Since the main hurdles to sell a product in a foreign country is change in language and culture, I learnt how to present out product accorsing to a particular country’s culture and social environment.

In my internship at Symphony Ltd, I also learnt a bit of logistics. I learnt about shipping documentation and process of booking the container for vessel when the goods are to be shipped to the destination. Logistics is a very important part of a business. It requires complete knowledge about the international trade rules and shipping details about freight boarding of goods reaching date, etc.

It’s not easy to survive such a competitive atmosphere and I learnt a very interesting thing, i.e. constant innovation is required in everything whether it is technology or sales techniques. I want to add a quote by Peter Drucker, “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.” (The Practice of Management, 1954).

So, now company is focusing to increase its annual sales by doing premium as well as creative branding on every possible media.

I would also like to mention that I am lucky to have met Mr Achal Bakeri, Managing Director of Symphony Ltd. He gave me many life lessons but one of the best lessons is that: “Failure should never allow you to shake your self-confidence.”

About the Author:

I am Abhijeet Parmar. I am currently pursuing the five-year integrated BBA+MBA programme at Jindal Global Business School pursuing his.