B-school students now look at industry bodies, NGOs

Tarun Narayan in Mumbai

Corporate India has been the conventional choice for management campuses, especially when it comes to delivering proactive projects to enhance placement possibilities. But for the new breed of B-school students, it’s time to rewrite the approach rules for actualising their aspirations. It’s not that summer projects with the FMCG majors or the telecom biggies do not come as their traditional career choices.
But now increasingly summer project initiatives of these management students are being extended to incorporate apex industry bodies like the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FICCI), and even voluntary social organisations like Leprosy Eradication Mission of India (LEMI) and United Nations International Children Education Fund (UNICEF).

What’s the new impetus? It seems to be a win-win for all the concerned people. For the industry bodies, this becomes an opportunity to rope in quality talent and a dedicated tribe who can render a high skilled input. Management students, on the other hand, utilise this experience to sharpen their initiatives to tackle macro-industry issues and simultaneously derive an insight into the brasstacks behind social image promotions, often embarked by corporates in collaboration with NGOs. The companies at the same time take this opportunity as an additional step in evaluating the extent of project experiences, displayed by Candidate Profiles (CPs) of the students primarily picked from the campuses.

Broad-based challenges
Sample this: Ideally a two-month internship in HR could have meant structuring practices for any of the industry majors for Mr Pratik Sen and Mr Vinay Pradhan from IIM-Bangalore. However, here is where their sense of yearning for a broad-based learning initiative came to be actualised. “We completed a stint of around one month with LG Electronics. And the remaining period went to CII and UNICEF,” remarks Mr Sen.

The opportunities and challenges at CII were something that they may not have got elsewhere immediately. At CII, they delved into the issue of creating an employment brand for attracting middle level managers. The nature of the project too was unique considering that employment brands are often strategised for acquiring fresh talent from campuses rather than recruitments at the middle level vacancies. The CII considers this to be a move towards assisting the trainees in mapping the management learnings in a larger spectrum of operation. “An internship or a corporate project takes them into a typical work profile and equips them with specialist thinking. But we make them apply their specific knowledge in a generic domain,” says Ms Hema Chaukar, director, CII. “Such efforts assist us in fuelling the mission of developing careers and creating strong corporate networks,” adds Ms Chaukar.

Along with chiselling an HR model for the corporates, the students also undertook a team building grid for the project executives of UNICEF. The model for UNICEF was meant to communicate the concept of the prominence in acknowledging mutual interdependence and importance that is key towards selflessly working towards a social objective.

“They alerted us to people-related pitfalls even in matters of missionary initiatives,” remarks Mr Anshuman Nair, project head, UNICEF. “The trainees guided us to gain a larger access into the depth and complications in dealing with human capital, even in institutions that are pledged in attaining society-specific goals,” affirms Mr Sen.

Take another case of Mr Rajul Sharma and Ms Rohini Madhav from the Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, Pune. While the summer projects for the trainees was with the marketing function of the Pune branch of Citadel the pharma company, part of their transitory industry sojourn was also dedicated to undertaking promoting the campaign of leprosy eradication in a village at Chinchwad as a brand recall initiative. The tie-up between Citadel and Leprosy Eradication Mission of India (LEMI) where Citadel was to distribute its drugs free, made them latch on to the NGO with a project proposal. “Every campaign could be lost due to lack of emotive empathy with the rural target. Our knowledge was being tested at the grassroots,” explains Ms Madhav. For the trainees this study could prove an extended long-term learning when it comes to strategising pharma brands for the rural markets in the future when they are into the industry full time.

Macro-industry exposure
“My summer stint with Hyundai endowed me with a company-centric experience. But an extended stint with FICCI enlightened me, with issues perpetually plaguing the industry at large,” says Mr Amit Arora, first year student, IIM-Lucknow. While with Hyundai Motors this trainee from IIM-L was involved in creating a brand planning model by structuring a consumer promotion initiative for the four-wheeler audience, pushing the profitability amidst price war was an experience he could derive from the project in FICCI. The reason: the industry association had commissioned him alongwith four other trainees from the institute to understanding the relevant pricing strategy that can be more receptive to the Indian consumer in the car market.

They conducted a market research with “Close-ended Price Focussed Questionnaire” (CPFQ) where they undertook a study on pricing patterns as a proportional variable to consumer feedback by taking attendant factors like scope of utility for the vehicle purchased, prestige, convenience and space etc. They undertook historical brand study of major players and suggested the pricing that not just salvages cost and sullies profits but also strengthens sustainable consumer relations. “We are lending them more structure spectrum to undertake broader dynamic strategies from a macro view point,” says Mr Ranjan Mukherjee, associate director (Projects), FICCI. “The corporates for fear of not being able to extracting the precise output from the freshers may not lend a larger share of business challenge as a part of the summer projects. But that’s where we surely chip in to plug the experience gap for the trainees,” Mr Mukherjee adds.

FICCI finds them a committed workforce which can create clarity oriented solutions for a larger corporate enigma. “These studies and surveys are more comprehensive and can be combined with the calculated solutions from consultants as an end user advantage by the corporates,” Mr Mukherjee opines. “We receive an insight into the holistic and the specifics of any business barrier at the same time,” says Mr Arora.

While company projects are the traditional route towards preparing for a corporate career, today management students are taking less travelled domain of having early exposures in larger industry associations and opportunities that give them exposure to social responsibilities and humanistic endeavours. This they believe will equip them for a more relevant tomorrow.