Internship Diaries of 2022 is a series about the various categories of roles offered by companies for summer internships. In this post, we bring to you the experiences of interns from Marketing to understand a bit more about their work & experience. The articles are meant to give the reader a glimpse into the life of an intern and help the reader understand their fit in that particular role.

Contributed By: Vijaylakshmi Pal

Vijaylakshmi Pal is an Computer Science Engineer with experience as a software engineer for a year, then a manager at her own start-up for 2 years. She interned with a Multinational Consumer Products Company as a Sales & Marketing Intern in the summers of 2022.

Edited By: Ruchi Agarwal

Based out of the North branch in Gurgaon, my summer internship project involved devising a traditional wholesale channel growth strategy to keep it relevant amidst the emergence of modern wholesale channels like eB2B and cash & carry. There was no one brand or product assigned to me for the focus of my sales strategy; therefore, it involved a lot of market workings for me. These market workings, I would say, gave me a real in-depth knowledge of the FMCG world and the problems it faces due to multiple channel conflicts. My interactions with the distributors, wholesalers, and retailers in the various mandis and non-mandis of Delhi and even Varanasi and Allahabad helped me properly benchmark Colgate-Palmolive products against its competitors. The early recommendations given by me for the optimization of the traditional wholesale channel were also pilot tested by me at the end, which was an added initiative taken by me in comparison to my peers, which I think provided me with an edge. My two months’ experience with this project helped me immensely in my 4th term course on sales & distribution.

Overall, my experience was filled with a lot of travel and on-the-ground learning, which I could also test in the end with some positive trend results.

In respect with the preparation for interviews, I watched a lot of innovative and creative advertisements to quote as examples. I spent time practicing a lot of marketing cases with group in terms of new product launch, relaunch or any crisis situation. Also, I prepared myself thoroughly with situation based questions based on my previous work and academic experience.