Earn While You Learn

Todays youth aims at getting financial independence at a very young age as they enter the job market by taking up summer or part time jobs . Initially, parents used to fund the entire education and students took up jobs after completion of higher studies . But now , students are taking financial responsibilities and sharing the financial burden with their parents . Earning while learning is more popular in the West but due to the rising cost of education and living expenses , the trend is slowly picking up in India too . Here , MBA students can avail of the summer or winter internships while pursuing their coursework . Besides the financial independence , summer internships can also add to their work experience . Students work as interns in different companies and take up the profiles in which they would like to make a career in the long run . It helps them to understand how real organizations function and acquire skill sets such as communication or general management , which will help them when they take up full-time jobs . On campus many students also try to explore their entrepreneurial avenues or start small businesses , which they can later on manage on a full-time basis. Some of the interesting business opportunities sported by B-school students while they are on campus are recycling house hold waste , selling scented candles , making solar lamps . manufacturing and supplying wind turbine components , starting a job portal or a food joint on the campus itself , starting tiffin services , cultivation and processing of medicinal plants , starting a gaming site , manufacturing customized puja kits . Starting a business while pursuing a course is beneficial for students since they can get guidance from the institute . Some of the institutes mentor students ventures by evaluating their ideas , helping them in making a business plan and implementing those ideas . Let us get an inside into summer/winter and autumn internship in Indian B-schools and how students can start their entrepreneurial venture while they are studying .

Summer Internships Students in B-schools start their summer internships after the first year of the course . In the first year , students study different subjects such as Marketing , Finance , Economics , Organizational Behaviour and Information Technology as part of their curriculum and in the second year , they take up specialized courses . Summer internships are a good break from their curriculum . They get into organizations , take up roles and responsibilities and acquire experience in the sectors which they aim to enter in their final placements . The internship acts as a transitional phase between the first year and the second year , offering students a chance to bridge the gap between theory and practice . They intern for 6-10 weeks in a company and the internship period may differ among various institutions . The summer internships process starts in October and finishes by November , December . Summer internships are important for the B-schools since they are indicators of how good the final placements will be for the institute . They help in building and strengthening the institutes reputation , the latter can get the feedback from the industry to improve the curriculum . For companies , summer internships are the means to engage students in some productive short-term assignments as well as evaluate them for the purpose of giving them pre-placement offers. Last year , students of IIMs and other leading B-schools interned in companies representing different sectors like BFSI and Investment Banking , FMCG and Pharma , Consulting , IT and Telecom , Conglomerates , Media , Real-estate and PSUs , Operations , Manufacturing and so on . The highest stipend for some institutes was Rs 1,00,000 and for some other it was Rs 1,50,000 and average stipend

Earn While You Learn

was around Rs 40,0000-Rs 50,000. Key recruiters were J.P.MorgAn , Citigroup , HUL , ICICI Bank , TCS , Wipro , ITC and so on . Students had taken up internships in Investment Banking , Consumer/Wholesale Banking , Derivatives , Marketing Research , software operations , etc ., some of the students interned in new domains like social gaming , advertising , rural finance , public policy formulation and carbon crediting .

Winter/autumn internships Some of the B-schools offer Winter or Autumn Internships and not the Summer Internships . For instance , S.P.Jain Institute of Management Studies and Research , Mumbai, sends its two-year full-time PGDM participants for social projects with NGOs during the summers . this is an integral part of Development of Corporate Citizenship ( DOCC ) . Hence , it has pioneered the concept of Autumn Projects , where participants undergo compulsory corporate internship during the months of September and October in the second year of the programme . The autumn Projects concluded for the class of 2012 in the month of August this year . The institute attracted premier companies from diverse sectors such as Financial Services , IT , Manufacturing , Healthcare , Media and Consulting . Some of these included TAS , HUL , P & G , Nestle , JP Morgan , Pepsi and Wipro Consulting . There were 14 new companies making offers on campus too , JM Financial , McKinsey , Flipkart , LOreal , Britannia Aditya Birla Group , HSBC among others. IIM Shillong had offered winter internships for its first batch but later on shifted to the traditional summer internships since there was a difference in the projects offered in winter and conventional summer placements . Department of Management Studies , IIT Delhi offered winter internships 2010 which was supplementing the more traditional summer internship placements . It provided a unique opportunity to participate in an additional internship-process for one-and-a-half month duration during DecemberJanuary . Around 24 companies visited the campus and they offered a wide variety of profiles to students . Some of the leading recruiters were TATA , NIIT , Ranbaxy , HP , Nikon ,. At NITIE , students take up internship project after their final recruitment in the second year . It provides an opportunity for the fresh recruit to know his organization better and the recruiter to assess the new employee . It helps the student in smoother transition from the institute to the industry . The project spans two quarters and accounts for 12 credits.

Entrepreneurial Venture In the last few years management students have been setting up their own ventures . They start a wide range of conventional and unconventional ventures . This provides them twin benefits of making some money and laying a foundation for a business venture which they will later on operate on full-time basis . B-Schools have their own entrepreneurship centres , which provides support in terms of mentoring , conducting workshops , seminars , designing business plans and angel investors networks across the country . Through this Centre , students give shape to their entrepreneurial ideas while they are on campus and turn them into successful business ventures . The table above provides a snapshot of initiatives taken by Entrepreneurship Centre of the leading B-schools in India .

Earn While You Learn

As observed , most of the B-school entrepreneurship centres conduct several workshops , contests , management development programmes , networking platforms , seed funding which will help students to start their own business . Some of the institutes also provide an option of Placement Holiday wherein a student can opt out of placements and start a venture and avail of the placement facility at a later date , if they need it . Internships or starting a business venture will not just provide money to students while they are studying on B-school campus but also provide them exposure to the field in which they would like to make their long-term career .