Illustrating Internship!!!

Before I write more about South India, I thought to write about my internship. So, I reached Chennai and reported to Mr. Subbaraman who introduced me to his boss Mr. Ashok Kumar. He asked the duration of my internship. Hearing two months, he said, “Okay, we’ve got two projects for you; each for one month. Apart from that if something else comes up, we’ll let you know. One will pertain to shrinkage. Do you’ve any idea about shrinkage?”

‘Shrinkage of stock’ were the words which came out of my mouth. Then I went on explaining that in the course of examining products, (prospective) customers may end up spoiling products. He added not only spoiling; they’ll take the products home which causes a major reduction in stock and consequently a loss for the store. So, you have to analyze the shrinkage-data and give a conclusion. Mr. Ramesh will be your mentor for this project.

“The other project will be about accounts. The stress will be on cost minimization; rather cost optimization. It’s about ‘triggering the trigger before it triggers the Books of Accounts’. Once an entry is made in the books, you cannot do much about it. So some things need to be done before posting the entries in the books. Mr. Subbaraman will be your mentor for this project.”

After that Mr. Ramesh took charge. He explained me the three types of size of Reliance stores and added that 87 stores are there in Chennai and ___ stores are there in Tamil Nadu. He further said that all the stock are first collected in the Distribution Centers and then dispatched to various stores. Certain perishable-prone items are directly distributed to the stores without the need of going through the Distribution Centre like bread etc. I added, “fruits and vegetables”. He said, “No, Distribution Centre acts as a collection centre for umpteen vendors as they can’t go individually to separate vendors.

He further said that ideally the %age of shrinkage should not exceed 0.5%. The moment it crosses 4%-5%; margin gone! I asked what the margin % is. He replied that some things are kept on a high-level.

After the verbal briefings, he opened an excel report sent by one of the stores. There were circa 4800 items and their various details. For the first time I was seeing the handling of such big data. He started using Auto Filter in various respects and bingo! the results started coming. I haven't used Auto Filter till that point of time, so I was trying to observe minutely. By that time I started feeling very sleepy. So, at the end of the day, he squeezed some meaningful insights from the raw data (I didn’t follow much!) and mailed back his questions (based upon the insights) to the store. I saw the professional thing happening.

Next day, Mr. Ramesh has to attend some meeting. So he forwarded two files to me and asked me to attempt them. I was allotted a corner of a cubicle with a decent hp desktop. For the first hour I didn’t have any idea what the files were about. I started reading the contents of the file and slowly understood that the first file is the file which was refined yesterday and the second file is the raw data of another store. Once I understood them, it hardly took 30-40 minutes to sort 50% of the data accordingly. Two terms which I didn’t understand were Zero-Count and No-Cost-SKUs. In the lunch I went to the Mount Road for some other work and had lunch at the Sarvana Bhawan.

Food is almost same in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. I think here they don’t have ‘toran’-a dry ‘sabji’ of every possible edible. Anyways, I liked the food at both the places. After lunch, he explained me both the terms and I sorted the data accordingly.

vacations!!! got nothing to do...

Whenever there is an exam, lagta hai ki jaldi se exam khatm ho. And once the exam ends, there doesn’t seem any work to do. Obviously one can read books, lekin wo mazaa nahi aata jo exam ke ek din pehle aata hai. After the exams, I left Trivandrum on 02.05.09 for Chennai and I left the same on 03.05.09 for Jamshedpur which I will be leaving on 06.05.09 for Lucknow and finally I expect to reach Gorakhpur on 08.05.09. It being such a diverse itinenary and many interesting things happened on the way. 

The relationship between the mood of passing vendors (selling edibles) and that of my stomach initially remains directly proportional, but after a certain limit becomes inversely proportional. At the cost of former becoming cheerful, the latter becomes upset. One such local vendor came selling something shaped like flattened potato with some jelly-sort-of-thing filled inside. After buying 7 of it for ten bucks, I asked its name. He replied ‘Taadi’. I picked one of them, eager to explore the taste and experience, squeezed only to find that the water inside the fruit fell on my jeans. My fellow-passenger (who spent 2 years in Andhra Pradesh) taking pity on me picked another one showing me how to break it apart. This time the water inside it fell on the novel ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ leaving him uttering arey re re... and embarrassed. Now I took the challenge of drinking the water inside it. But despite my efforts only a few drops of the last piece was I able to savor. 

“Nobody writes about me these days” Yakshi complained. “Now, now, sentences like these are my patents. How can you be so alone? I asked, “Where is hp? Go and I’ll ask him to write something about you. He writes so beautifully, I have appreciated all his works and was quite missing his blogs”.

When hp posted my previous blog in our batch’s blog entitled “South Indian life on a North Indian perspective...”, I became a bit excited, as I've got a new issue (South India) to write about. So, my first visit to South India was in July 2007 when I came to Bangalore (via Chennai) to attend the GD and PI of Bharathidasan Institute of Management. 

The moment I entered kind-of-South-India (there’s no clear-cut boundary separating South and North India), I started feeling a bit different. Movie-posters in regional languages having most of the actors with goggles and moustaches, different actresses, people with mundu (dhoti) and tilak on forehead, Women wearing ghazaras etc. all these factors excited me. At that moment I even started to frame the answer of the question (which might be asked in the interview)- What did you find different in South India?

to be contd...

06.02

Got the maximum score in the first round of the quiz and the minimum in the mains and the fact that it happened for two consecutive times cannot be a coincidence. There could be two possibilities. Either I’m not habituated to stage-performance (I become tooo excited) or I don’t think before I answer the questions. Whatever the problem is, I've to get rid of it.

        People from Aviva came for the project-training and final placements. They expressly said whatever topic of project you choose, the work which you are going to get is sales. No comments on that. Then they again asked the same set of arid questions. What's the objective of your life? What do you want to do in your life? How much money do you want to see as your bank-balance? At one point of time, their representative even questioned our pursuing of this PGPM course (kind-of who-had-asked-you-to-pursue-MBA?). I didn’t have the guts to counter his statement because I wasn’t sure of my goals and several other questions he asked. The same set of questions was asked by Dr. Mathai Fenn in an earlier session.

At a post-graduate level, if one asks me my life-objective (or let’s say career-objective) and am unable to answer it, it’s a very embarrassing situation. I used to think that I’ll go for research and the topic of research will be decided in due course of time (I still wonder, if that time is not now then when that time is going to come). I think that I may consider a project in an NGO. Let’s see how they work and then make the decision of final placement (as if everything is in my hand). But, still I need to make a career objective. Let’s hope that I’ll be more clear in my next blog.

I don’t understand why my dear classmates are unable to understand my problem of not-understanding-the-regional-languages. But, their going this way will at least help me exploring some nuances of Malayalam (can’t help being optimist). I recall an incident when I was discussing some accounts problem with Dhannya in the presence of Amitabh. I and Dhannya were talking in Hindi and Amitabh was unable to understand anything. The moment I felt Amitabh’s presence, after saying sorry to him I explained the whole thing to him in English.

So, when I went to my home this vacation, I started eating fish. I left eating non-veg for moral reasons but then I thought if I have to explore the food-world, (to be frank, the taste-factor was also there) I’d start eating the sea-food. Lets see how well it goes…

 I was thinking of the crisis-situation which India Inc. is facing and therefore resorting to all the cost-cutting measures to the maximum extent (this extent differs from company to company). For sure, this is the best time to advertise on the products on which the company has the most belief. Its also the time to focus just on the core competency. The common reason is that competition is low and all the competitors would be cutting costs. So the thought which came to my mind was how good it would be, if these companies continue these cost-cutting measures even in the normal-times. Won't it cut costs to a great extent in the short as well as long-run? The only negative points am able to find are that the companies won't dare to expand in other businesses and this current sacking of employees in the pursuit of cost-cutting.

Idly resting in peace and having no work to do I was thinking about the last passed four and a half months. The first semester of the PGPM program has ended and still it seems that it’s just a matter of yesterday that I came to ASB. Well! Lots of studies, fun, work-pressure (sometimes, at least) we’ve dealt with. But the million dollar question is how much have I been able to extract out of the time and money I invested in! or shall I go for a holistic approach (evaluate only when the complete program finishes up)?

The subjects were Information Analysis and Decision Making, Marketing Management, Critical Thinking, Organizational Behavior, Business Communication, Interpersonal Skills. In IAD, we’d to deal with lots of concepts and numbers-crunching. Broadly it revolved around the concepts of probability and normal distribution. I’m sure that at least these two concepts will be quite handy in actual business environment.

Then, in Marketing Management we’re broadly taught the a,b,c to x,y,z of marketing. Lots of new complex terms and every concept was kind-of ideal. But we did undergo some case-studies which were superb. Whenever I used to prepare for the tests, it always seemed to me whatever is written in the textbook is obvious, but then, in exam that only thing didn’t use to come in my mind. Can’t help!

Critical Thinking! How logical one can be? Undoubtedly, I’ve been benefited by this course, but it seems that I’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg. Much more is to be explored. Organizational Behavior! There was some feeling inside me that culture could be different of different places, but I didn’t know that a couple of chapters were entirely devoted to this aspect. Besides this, I learnt a LOT of new things, particularly, how to socialize. ;-)

Business Communications and Interpersonal skills! Writing formal letters in a completely informal environment and having discussions on sensitive issues with comical comments.
So! Have I changed even by a bit? Broadly no, but seeing from a micro-perspective yes.

to be continued...

Bitten by blog-bug

Date: Nov 10, 08. Seminar by Mr. Vinay Anand at ASB Seminar Hall. He asked as to why are we pursuing MBA? I replied the same old answer that I was working in a government institute where growth prospects were not much. So I thought to take a break and also to launch myself in the corporate world, I decided to pursue this course. Pat came his argument: so how do you find the private sector NOW (his indication was towards the melt-down)? I said okay, there are ups and downs in every economy. This is the down-state. Then Manmohan Singh Government should immediately appoint you. He replied. The whole audience laughed.


I just finished “Snapshots From Hell”. There when Mr. Peter Robinson finished his graduation from Stanford, he also landed in a bit likely situation of Depression. Discussing this topic with Hareesh I contrasted this situation with us. He commented, “There is one difference. Companies will always come to Stanford but they may reconsider their decision to come to other B-Schools.”


Well! That was the funnier part. I sometimes think on the skills I'd develop so that I land with a GOOD job in spite and despite this crisis. I've to improve my presentations skills and definitely, while speaking I've to be more confident and have to make my thinking process a bit slow. Sometimes what happens is I have much stuff to speak, and one more thing preoccupies my mind that I might be wasting other people time. So I want to finish speaking at the earliest. And there arises the problem of people not being able to decipher whatever I vomit.

Now, how do I define good job? Initially I used to think that CTC is the only deciding factor of so-called good job. But perception starts differing with the experience and passage of time and the beauty is that though I experienced this thing before, I learnt this in Organizational Behavior. I've always been interested in research work (I don’t have any idea right now, but m sure as I get along the course, I’ll definitely find an appropriate theme to research upon).

Whenever we discuss about some problem (lets say child labor, corruption, terrorism) in our class, very often we end up with very general solutions which every body knows but nobody implements because of the vague nature of the solution. My numb question has always been to myself as to WHAT I AM DOING TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. Will discussing the nuances of the problem and later forgetting will in any way help solving the problem?


To be contd…