“Students during internships should look at developing new skills” – Ankita Tandon, COO, CouponDunia

“The kind of time that a student has in hand, you never get that time again. So you should use that time very carefully…If you’re doing something that’s not exciting you, don’t do it!

These are the words of Ankita Tandon, the current Chief Operating Officer of CouponDunia and co-founder of DeliveryChef. She believes that not every internship contributes in enabling the student climb the development ladder. She says that it’s very important for a student to ask questions while choosing an internship and not just do it for namesake.

Internshala in conversation with Ankita Tandon.

Ankita, walking down the memory lane, what kind of a student were you in school? What made you choose Economics as a subject for graduation?

In school I naturally gravitated towards Maths and Physics, following which I took Science in XI and XII. I also opted for Economics as I didn’t want to study Biology; I had a phobia for Biology. In school and my younger years I used to do very well in the subjects that I liked and I did average in the subjects that I didn’t fancy. When I moved to a degree college to study Economics, a subject that I really liked, I did extremely well academically; in the university exams I stood first in Economics in University Of Mumbai. That was a big achievement and milestone, following which the natural decision was to continue in the same field (Economics) and then move on to Finance, which was a natural extension of the subject. So, I then went to Warwick Business School to do a Masters in Finance & Economics.

Going back to your undergraduation, you interned at Standard Chartered Bank. Could you please share your views on how significant that experience was?

To be honest, it wasn’t something that I thought about. I don’t think it was something that had shaped me in any way; it was something that your parents would want you to do to fill in the gap during the summers. 

Given hindsight, I would recommend that students during internships should look at developing new skills; perhaps excelling in something like designing or Microsoft Office (according to an individual’s interest). Because when you jump into your first job, you’re expected to know this; hence these skills are more important. Also, when you are seventeen or eighteen and you start looking for an internship in financial service institutions, they have rules and regulations as to how much work they can entrust upon on someone who is so young. So you do not really end up getting any valuable work to do. Hence, I think it’s more meaningful to spend your time in acquiring skills.

I once did an internship with the National Association For The Blind. That, to me, was far more fulfilling than what I did at Standard Chartered Bank. I felt that I was actually adding value; that helped in character building. After experiencing it all, I would say that definitely invest your time in acquiring more skills and doing any kind of community led projects; that would be brilliant. It gives you more perspective. All of us who have access to good education, constitute only about 0.001% of the population; that’s a privilege. It really helps when you go out there and try to help the lesser fortunate. It gives you a perspective, helps you discover a gratitude for what you have and shapes you into a more evolved individual.  

What should the students do to make their internships create a difference and add to the skill development that you described?

I think sometimes students just want to do an internship to add value to their resume, so they take up anything. In my opinion, it’s very important to ask from the person who is employing you to define exactly what will be your deliverables and what you will be learning out of the internship. These are very fair questions to ask because you are giving valuable time to the employer with a prime objective to learn. You should ask and then evaluate if the internship is worth your time and effort. The kind of time that a student has in hand, you never get that time again. So you should use that time very carefully. I would say if you’re doing something that’s not exciting you, don’t do it. Go out there and learn anything else like dance or paint; at least you’ll meet new people and learn the art of communicating with different people. That’s more of a development for me than just pushing paper around and doing an internship only for the sake of doing an internship.

As a student you’ve had a global exposure. Do you think there’s a significant difference in the approach that students have here and outside towards learning?

Yes, I think so. I think that’s a drawback of our education system. A lot of the Indian curriculum is based on rote learning. The focus in on writing the perfect answer to get the maximum marks and not essentially on learning. So our curriculum is about reading a book and then producing exactly the same as what you read. As a student, it makes you wonder as to why you are learning a particular theory. These questions come to your mind because you do not know the practical applications to these theories. So, the difference completely lies in the way of how a theory is taught. Over there they teach you a theory and provide a real life scenario and ask you to identify the possible outcomes of the theory in such a scenario. It’s a completely different approach to learning and understanding (as compared to the approach we have).

Ankita, do you have an internship program at CouponDunia? If yes, how is the program designed to make it beneficial for the interns?

Yes, we do hire interns at CouponDunia. Our internship program is more like a dry run. We give interns some projects to do and if they perform well, we make full time offers to them.

To make the program valuable what we definitely do is that before hiring an intern we keep a project plan in place. We don’t just hire an intern with an attitude “Le aao phir dekhte hain kya karwana hai” (bring him/her on board and we’ll see later what work to assign) and waste his/her time . Instead, we call the interns and inform them regarding the project and define the objectives that are expected to be achieved. 

Do you think that interns can indeed add value to an enterprise?

Absolutely! Sometimes there are certain ideas that we have and we want to evaluate if they are worth implementing. But being an entrepreneur, my hand are full and I do not have the time to do a research and figure out if I should do that particular thing or not. I can definitely hire an intern who can work with us for 2-3 months and conduct a market research, talk to people and put the findings together in one place. It would help me evaluate whether to go with a particular idea or not. Especially in a startup, where there’s a limited bandwidth, hiring interns can be really useful.

We have had some really good interns on board. We had a technical intern who managed to build a very nice heat map for us. With the help of that we were able to get a good representation of the density of our users in different areas of a particular city; something that was previously not possible to figure out. This helped us to cater our services better in accordance with the population of users in a specific area.  

Ankita, as a wrap to this conversation, what would be your piece of advice to the students to make better career choices?

Never stop learning; the day you stop learning, you stop living. 

Keep reading. There is more knowledge in this world than you can ever absorb. There’s never too much knowledge that one can have. So keep learning; that’s the only way to be at the top of the game.

Editor’s note: Are you an employer looking for interns? Hire interns through Internshala; it’s free and hassle-free.