Hey there!
I’m Dhruv Patwa, a 3rd-year student in Chemical Engineering, and I interned at PepsiCo. in the summer of 2021. This article would be an account of the experience of a very confused senior, who explored a lot of things to figure out his interest (Still doing it :P)
The Intern Quest:
It was the month of February. Hearing from seniors that a 2nd year internship in your interest area does help to some extent in securing a relevant 3rd year internship, was the first time I started thinking about an internship during the coming summer. But, it wasn't easy for me to search for one as I was interested in a lot of profiles and wanted to explore everything.
So, at first, I started applying to professors in various B-schools in the fields of strategy and operations. Probably till that time, I wasn’t very sure of the exact kind of work I desired. But soon realized that I preferred an environment where the work I do is implemented and can generate results. I was quite interested in the fields of Supply chain, Operations as well as core chemical engineering.
I knew that these fields were unconventional/less explored, and had fewer opportunities than software or analytics, especially for a 2nd-year internship. But this didn’t stop me from exploring my interests. So, I started applying to various FMCG companies by messaging IITB alumni or simply the HRs working in those companies via LinkedIn. I also applied via websites in a few companies but failed to get a single positive response. I had also mailed a few scientists in National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune, for an internship, but they weren’t hiring interns that summer due to Covid :(
It was already the month of April, and I was feeling anxious about not having secured an internship offer for summer when an IITB alumnus working in PepsiCo. who earlier didn’t have any opportunity reverted to me saying that he wanted to hire an intern for a project in the field of supplier performance management (A subfield of supply chain management where we assess the performance of suppliers of a company to facilitate better decisions). As such, there wasn’t any prerequisite for the role except enthusiasm to know more. I was asked to write a 1-page write-up on my understanding of the field. Then, there was an interview in which they mainly asked questions on my resume and a few basic things on supply chain and logistics.
The Internship:
My internship project was divided into two parts. First was identifying some Key Performance indicators (KPIs) for the logistic/transportation suppliers of the company (For Example, the percentage of deliveries on time), and the other was creating an automated dashboard to rate the performance of suppliers on the identified KPIs. I had to learn to use Power BI from scratch and so faced a lot of difficulties in that, but in the end, everything fell into place. The dashboard also had a lot of visual analytics features to facilitate an easy understanding of the complex data present in the system.
It was a 2-month internship. During the period, I learned a bit more about supply chain and logistics and a lot about Power BI. I also interacted with a few stakeholders inside the company while setting up the automated system to input the data into the dashboard. My mentors were always very approachable and also connected me to a couple of analytics specialists working at PepsiCo. South Africa to sort some of my queries in Power BI.
Overall, this internship could give me more exposure to my fields of interest while also letting me know more about analytics. Working in such a large FMCG company itself provides a lot of exposure to how various steps work, right from placing orders to different suppliers, transporting the supplies, manufacturing the finished products, and finally supplying them out to the market, along with digitally capturing real-time information of moving goods. I think this experience played a significant role in the selection procedure of my 3rd-year internship at Piramal Pharma Solutions.
For the Summer Break:
Apart from an internship, you can also pursue SURP (Summer Undergraduate Research Program) and iSURP( in-Semester Undergraduate Research program) projects which are a great way to learn new things under the guidance of professors of any department you are interested in. During the summer, I was also working on a SURP project under Prof. Rahul Nabar and Prof. Sandip Roy in our department. It was about Analytics and Database creation of accidents in the chemical industry.
Words of Advice:
Thanks for reading till this point. I hope you gained something from this blog. Lastly, the only message I want to give is that you might feel overwhelmed by others’ achievements on some days. That’s absolutely normal, and everyone passes through such phases in life, but try not to let that anxiety creep into your private mental space, as everything that looks glamorous from outside has its other side as well. Do not let go of any opportunity to explore stuff that interests you. Talk to your friends and family regularly and enjoy whatever comes your way.
That goes without saying, you can reach out to me (via messenger or my contact number 8890789269) in case you want to discuss anything.
Cheerio!