Summer Internship with Perfetti Van Melle — Kavya from IMT Ghaziabad
Wildcard entry for: – 27th August 2012
Name of the intern: – Kavya
Institute: – IMT Ghaziabad
Organization interned with: – Perfetti Van Melle
Part 1, Act 1: Dimaag Ki Batti Jala De: BCG Matrix, Ansoff Matrix, BTL vs. ATL, Marketing Mix, 4 P’s , 5 C’s and STP cramming up later, finally, THE day.
Interviewer: I see the enthusiasm in you to land an FMCG summer but are you sure you are ready for the grind?
Me: Absolutely sir. Moving out of one’s comfort zone is where the real learning is in life. Blah..Blah..
Interviewer: *heavy cough* So you mentioned you don’t know Hindi. Now consider I post you in Punjab or Uttar Pradesh to sell candies. You are up for it?
Me: (:O Hindi-nahi-maalum-hai-Madrasi trying to keep a straight face) Language shouldn’t be an issue sir as long as one has the willingness to explore boundaries. I have half a year before my summer starts. I am sure I will pick up the language by then.
6 months later, DLP Canteen: Bhaiya do bada chai de do. Yes. That was all where my Hindi stood :(
Part 1 Act 2: Dobara Mat Poochna: I call my Granny after the interview to let her know that I have landed an FMCG summer internship.
Me (toning down the MBA jargon): Grandma, I am going to do work with a chocolate company next summer.
Grandma: Kanna, so you are telling me, after 4 years of engineering, a year of work life and a year of MBA later, you are going to sell fifty paisa chocolates?
Me: Spot on grandma :|
The endless wait for job location to arrive now starts.
Part 1 Final Nail: Zubaan Pe Rakhe Lagaam: Month of April: The much awaited mail lands up in the inbox.
Project Scope: Rural Van Operations. Project Location: Rural Maharashtra. You keep staring at the screen for 10 minutes; come again, rural van operations? A quick search and even mighty Google doesn’t return anything motivating. Sample search result: “To enhance awareness of our product in the interiors of the country, wall paintings & rural van operations are in full swing. Unique localised trial generation plans will be implemented through Haats, Puppet shows and pilot salesmen.” Wall paintings, Haats and puppet shows? I’m hysterical now thinking about the summers.
Part 2: Bade kaam ki cheez: After endless sleepless nights wondering how I was going to survive the rural experience sans the language, Nashik district calling it was, to get my hands dirty! Clichéd as it may sound, little did I know that those 2 months in rural Maharashtra were going to change the way I looked at life. A state bus from Nashik bus sthanak takes me to my Super Stockist’s warehouse 30 km away. Enter a guy with fancy ear studs, pressed formals and weird pointed shoes, “Maa-daam I am your assigned Pilot Sales Representative (PSR) for the next two months.” “Maa-daam”, in that weird tone – a word I am likely to not get over any time soon. Innumerable Maadaams, “Maa-dam aaj kahan chalna hai”, “Maa-dam naashtha karna hai”, “Maa-dam yeh maal kabhi leta nahi, woh dukaan pe try karte hain.” And to be fair to him, “Bhai-yaaa” is a word he isn’t likely to forget any time soon either :) A normal day usually consisted of loading our beloved red Maruti Omni with every SKU (Stock Keeping Unit – me trying to show off my acquired MBA jargon) of chocolate boxes available, me, my PSR and driver in that order, squeezing ourselves into the front seats of the overflowing van; sunscreen — check, dupatta — check, oversized sunglasses — check; off to wilderness! Niphad, Satana, Malegaon, Pimpalgaon, Dindori, Baindali — all to assess sustainability of rural confectionary distribution among wholesalers, distributors, retailers, chemists, stockists!
My PSR was a 10th graduate hailing from one of those gaons around. He had an unapologetic view about every topic in life. Compensated for the lack of FM Radio in our van! One of the foremost things I learnt in my internship? Formal education isn’t everything. Here was a guy who could offer deeper insights about sales and marketing in plain brash terms than what my Marketing Management books I & II could teach me. “Maa-dam a formal degree is the only thing that’s holding me back with regret in life. See the demand for bottled water? People spending hard-earned money on something that is freely available, that is what marketing does. I will open a bottling plant bigger than Bisleri one day.”
Lesson No 1. The Great Indian Rural is an oxymoron. Rural is actually no more rural. DTH takes Anne Hathaway and Scarlett Johansson to their homes these days. Vodafone Chota recharge, Dettol’s 50 gm 6 Rs. soap bar, Chota Coke , PnG’s 1 Re Pantene sachet, every MNC is vying to capture their attention. Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid is indeed a loot. All said and done, Rural Branding is a starkly opposite battle ground. Sample? Parachute’s competition in rural areas? Blue-bottled Parachun. Big Babool’s competitor: Big Bamboo. And Ariel/ Surf Excel’s competitior – not Wheel/ Rin but Ghari detergent. Philip Kotler tells us that that every brand aspires to be “known for the product category it represents”, like what Xerox is to Photostat or Adobe Photoshop is to image editing. In the rural context, you discover how this thought has permeated deep through to include Pepsi denoting the 1 Re freezed orange stick, Kurkure denoting any oily wafers/potato chips sold and Cadbury denoting any chocolate sold.
Lesson No 2: When you realize that people after a hard tiring afternoon at the field consume two Parle-G packets as their lunch or use Lifebuoy for personal hygiene as well as washing clothes, you understand how tongue-in-cheek marketing efforts would take you nowhere in rural but rather brands that form emotional connect with the people have been the ones surviving. Sales isn’t just “I have a product you need, you have the money I need, let’s exchange it.” Sales is also about the people.
Me: “Namaste dada hum Alpenliebe company se aa rahe hain. Bolo aap kya kareedoge aaj?”
Shopkeeper: Yeh lal wali chocolate kitne ka hai?
An over-enthusiastic me: XX chocolates XX rupees.
A visibly frowning PSR: Madam aap mera kaam mat karo. English pe bolege to kuch faida nahi.
Ego hurt. Message Marathi friend, “Quickly translate the following numbers in Marathi” He is like, “What’s up?” Next day armed with mugged up Marathi knowledge, I begin showing off Ek she thetis, Shambhar, Ek she bechaalis. My PSR is a little confused about how do to deal with my interfering over-enthusiasm. Sales complete at outlet, we proceed in our van to the next village for a stopover. Part of my routine? Noting down villages’ names, so that when I complete my summers, I can hand my PSR the optimum beat list or the route plan of sales for a particular day. So I ask “Bhaiya yeh gaon ka naam kya hai?”
PSR: Bajula Thambav.
I write down in CAPS on my Daily Market Report “2nd town visited BAJULA THAMBAV.” Both my driver and PSR burst out laughing. I’m confused :/ After the tears have rolled down, they tell me he had directed the driver to go a little to the side and stop the van, and it wasn’t the village name. Trolled!
Lesson No 3: Ego gets you nowhere. I recollect how I was sceptical about drinking pot water a shop keeper offered. Half my expenses till then were on bottled water. The shop keeper said something that cut across sharply, “Madam I have a 4 and a 6 year old here. They don’t fall sick drinking this. And I wouldn’t give this to you if I thought you would.” Kotler may term it CRM , still, Sales is indeed about relationships. A 60 year old shopkeeper to me – “You are a South Indian girl speaking broken Hindi roaming about in rural Maharashtra in a van filled with chocolates with two guys who look suspicious and you tell me your mom at home isn’t worried about finding you a groom?”
Summer Internship in FMCG Sales is a difficult experience to explain — Loved it? Check. Hated it? Double check. 3666 km of broadened outlook? That is what I gladly took away!
P.S. The article is a tongue-in-cheek look at my summer internship. Mr. Nilesh Deore, my Radio-Mirchi PSR, Mr. Deepak, my seedha-saadha driver and my cribbing-companion & co-intern, Ms. Radhika, thanks for making the two month journey the experience of a lifetime!
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