Does everything have a purpose? I am not sure but sometimes, things happen for a reason.
Interesting turn
If you get an opportunity to visit a city you’ve always wanted to, you wouldn’t think twice before saying ‘yes’. The first thing I did when I got a mail from our college placement committee about an internship offer with Kaybase in Chennai was study the company and their clientele (I also wanted to know more about their projects and the type of research they do but I could not get the data).
The interview was scheduled for the evening of December 10, 2014 and though I was well-prepared, I didn’t think it was enough. After the interview, I was confused on whether it went well or not — they asked me more about my interests than the industry or the company.
A few hours later, I received a mail from the placement committee, saying I was selected for the internship.
Break away
I spent the first day of the internship getting to know the company and meeting the man behind it — Ashok R Sankethi. He wasn’t what we expected — he is a simple, unassuming man with more than two decades of experience on his shoulders. He introduced me to the three projects I would be working on.
1. Find out research areas that cater to agri-business companies in South India.
2. Find out the market share of retail channels in consumer durables.
3. Study customer satisfaction level of people holidaying in resorts in India.
The projects consisted of primary research data — getting responses from different sets of people was not an easy task. But it didn’t take too much time to conduct the analysis with the help of SPSS tool. The results we gathered and the simple percentage analysis at tea time made for meaningful discussions.
I got the second and third projects done, but wasn’t able to meet the deliverables on the agri-business project because of the limited time and resources. I was then assigned to work on a live project about customer satisfaction levels. I got a lot of experience from it, which helped in my final placements.
Touch down
Most professionals talk about balancing work and their personal life and managing stress levels, which I experienced during my internship itself. To deal with it, we used to play cricket on the terrace in the evenings; a majority of our lunch hour discussions were related to the cultural differences in India. Topics like ‘Should there be a censor on the language we use in office?’ brought out different opinions to the table.
I interned with three companies when I was in college but the experience I got at Kaybase, the people I worked with and the amount of weight it added to my resume was far better than any other.