Winter internship at PepsiCo–cool office, great work and more
Krishna Vamsi studies at IIT Kharagpur. He had a wonderful time interning with the HR Department of PepsiCo in the winter of 2012. Read about his experiences at PepsiCo here.
The name PepsiCo itself excites, right? Why not, it’s the brand that drives the entire world, not only India, crazy. The fact is that I hate all PepsiCo products but ended up drinking one or the other in office for 45 days (it’s all free except Tropicana!).
Starting my first journey towards North India, I landed in the capital New Delhi. My excitement had peaked when I entered the office of PepsiCo on the first day with a warm welcome from Katrina Kaif (the model for Slice) posters. It probably motivated PepsiCo employees to work hard. The office was really cool—the walls were covered with posters, there were Pepsi machines everywhere and people were chilling out.
I had a discussion with my mentor and was given the task of understanding the Intranet of PepsiCo. I was also supposed to handle the PepsiCo performance development review (PDR) of all of India. It shocked me when I found out that I would be the single point of contact for all the regional HR’s regarding the PDR. The entire PDR was handled in the KBC format with all Indian plant locations and business units being divided into teams. There were stages and deadlines and contests for each and every level of PDR. I was asked to take feedback from all HRs and also complete tasks of internal communication. As the days went by, I got complete control of the PepsiCo organisational structure and the PDR evaluation module. I made friends with PepsiCo HRs all over India (some even used to discuss movie reviews, breakfast varieties and cricket scores). Parallel to that, the work of revamping the intranet also went on. But I always tried to interact with the talent acquisition team where my heart lies. However, my mentor made me love the organisation capability domain and the team. Thus the winter internship came to an end with successful completion of the PDR contest and revamping of the intranet (which has been implemented). On the last day I was given tips by the HR manager and a small bouquet of flowers with a certificate of internship completion and also, of course, my stipend.
Besides the internship, I had awesome Delhi food, specially “Chhola Bhatura” which was my food for more than 26 days during my 45 day stay, watched numerous movies, got to know the wonderful Delhi people, made a few friends and 15 days of having the mighty Royal Enfield helped me roam around Gurgaon like a prince! It was truly an experience of a lifetime.
