Summer Internship with SBI Capital Markets – Abhijit Kotkar from TAPMI
Abhijit Kotkar interned with SBI Capital Markets this summer and shares his newly learnt experience at SBI Caps with us. Abhijit is an MBA student at TA Pai Management Institute. Here’s his internship story.
Four students from TAPMI, Manipal were selected for internship at SBI Capital markets. SBI Caps is an investment bank that offers entire range of investment banking and corporate advisory services. Of the four students selected, two of us were asked to report at Mumbai head office. Since I am from Mumbai it was a golden opportunity for me to stay at home and also to work for a prestigious investment bank like SBI Caps.
I left Manipal with mixed feelings of leaving friends for this 2 months internship programme and reaching home to meet my family members again after a six months haul. At the same time I was exhilarated at the thought of being recruited by the only investment bank that visited our campus. My thoughts were broken with the announcement of the plane landing at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport & my heart was overwhelmed with satisfaction of reaching Mumbai.
On First day of internship, we were asked to report at Cuffe Parade office. Cuffe Parade is a posh and an extremely upmarket neighbourhood in South Mumbai. Although I have been living in Mumbai since childhood, I hardly visited south Mumbai. I found my way to the office building through Mumbai’s lifeline – Local train. After having completed the Herculean task of travelling in Mumbai local during peak hours, I was completely amazed at the sight of a 22 floor building. All head offices of major companies were located in this building & my office was on 21st floor. The view of Marine drive, CM’s bungalow & Nariman point from the office room’s window was mesmerizing. After reaching office, I met Sujatha Madam, head HR. She was a very friendly lady & she introduced me to my manager, Mr Puneet.
My manager explained me my work and then he introduced me to Mr. Joshi, SVP. Mr. Joshi clarified my role further and wished me luck for my assignment. My assignment was to understand the bond issuance process, identify the potential investors interested in investing in SBI foreign currency bond issue & developing a model to predict bankruptcy of a firm.
I started communicating with my colleagues Praful and Saurabh, both of them were very friendly and intelligent. They taught me basics of bonds and how bond issuance is done in Indian and International market. First day passed easily with new people and at a new place. When I left the office during evening peak hours, I again started my battle to get a place in local.
Soon, I adapted myself to this hectic schedule of Mumbaikars. In the first week, I learnt basics and understood structure of SBI caps. At the start of second week of my Internship, my manager told me to get ready and accompany him to investor meetings. Then Praful clarified further that we were going to Taj Vivanta to meet foreign investors. We spent the whole day in Taj meeting 3-4 investors from different countries. In every meeting we talked in terms millions of dollars. I felt lucky to have been associated with a company of immense credibility.
SBI bond issue date was approaching soon & hence my entire second week was engaged in meeting investors. The entire team was travelling to different places to meet various investors. Roadshows were being conducted in full swing in all parts of the world. After all $1.25 billion was big amount & seven other banks were also involved in the bond issue. I was working in office day and night with everybody else, preparing for roadshows & presentations for investors. It was a great feeling to see everybody working together to achieve something big.
Finally the day came, when bond issue was going live. All of us were sitting in Bloomberg room waiting for the Singapore stock exchange (SGX) to start. I could see a sense of achievement on everyone’s face because bond issue was oversubscribed 5 times. The time came when SGX started and bond sold breaking all previous records. It was a feeling of accomplishment for everyone when they could see their efforts being materialized. For a moment I felt as if I am sitting in NASA’s lab and our satellite has successfully launched. At that time I realized what teamwork and sense of accomplishment is. That day the entire team partied in Taj & SBI chairman personally congratulated everybody on the team.
Next few weeks were extremely strenuous for me. We had to analyse the investors and their investment pattern. Based on the results of this analysis, SBI Caps offers future Indian bond issues to them. After all investment banking is about building relationships and nurturing them. We analysed 500 investors across the globe. Also, many new investors participated in this bond issue so this analysis was of paramount importance to SBI Caps. We contacted those investors again and understood their preference for Indian bond. Based on this information, profiling of every investor was done.
Simultaneously, I started working on another assignment of predicting probability of a firm going bankrupt. It was a pilot project in SBI Caps as they wanted to build a model to test a firm before accepting its bond issue. The reputation of a bank is at stake whenever they execute a bond issue, hence this model was extremely vital for the organization. I worked with an alternative team to build this model. We conducted extensive research on few companies and came up with a model. By the time my internship came to an end, SBI Caps started testing this model that I built with their team. This work was appreciated by our SVP and he personally met me to appreciate my work.
Over time I built personal relationship with everyone there. During this 2 months tenure, I never felt as if I was only an intern at SBI Caps, but was treated just like a regular employee. The internship at SBI caps was a great learning experience for me. I gained real industry exposure and was allowed me to work at the front end to understand how IB industry works. For an onlooker Investment Banking seems to be a very fascinating job but experiencing it for two months made me realize how strenuous the job is. These two magical months gave me a glimpse of real financial world & an insight into the day to day life of an investment banker.
Given a chance, I would love to contribute to this organization as an employee.
If Abhijit‘s experience motivates you, you can view the latest internship in Mumbai.
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