India, Infosys and Internship...

And I am back! For those of you who were looking for my regular blog updates-A big “sorry”. My internship has kept me busy. And when I wrote that I meant it!! And for those of you who are still unaware where I did my internship – I did it with the IT giant INFOSYS in Bangalore in India. Yes Finally I also got “Bangalored”.

I was a part of Infosys’ global internship program called “InStep”. InStep is primarily the brainchild of NRN, the founder and Chief Mentor of Infosys. The program brings in the best brains from the top universities across the world who would work on important projects of Infosys. The interns bring in different perspectives of the problem resulting in innovative solutions. Given that I am a mechanical engineer with 4 years of technical sales and marketing experience and various manufacturing industry exposure (Oil & Gas, Minerals &Metals, Auto..) and an MBA from one of the top North American schools, I was a natural choice for Infosys. I was there for 17 weeks – having fun professionally (yes..I definitely enjoyed my work..) and personally.

Infosys was an amazing experience for me in three aspects. First and foremost, IT was a new industry to me. My earlier exposure was more towards the machines side. And definitely it was good and I loved it. If I am to call my earlier experience good, the IT experience would also have been similar good – but Infosys made that “exceptional”. The way they take care of their people, the way they groom them for future- everything is “class”. Not every company in the IT industry is able to do it. At least not every company of Infosys’s size is able to do it. Given that it is very difficult to be a “big company while retaining culture of a small company, Infosys has done this successfully.

Second, the project I was involved with. I was in one of Infosys’ critical projects and I got to use most of my 1 year of MBA learning, my leadership skills, set higher benchmark for myself and exceed expectations.

Third and most important – the people I met. I will tell you why with a simple statistics. My “facebook” friends list increased by 90 (:)) during the Infy internship period. And 82 of these friends were my fellow interns at Infosys and the rest are Infosys employees. I made such amazing friends – from all across the world, from the top universities. I can now confidently say that if I am to travel to any region in the world, I have a friend there. From Australia to Zimbabwe to Bulgaria to Kenya to Japan. I owe a big, lovely “thanks” to Infosys for making this happen.

I have had so many learnings during my 17 weeks marathon at Infosys that I need to apply these learnings during my second year of MBA program. I am also curious in knowing how my baby (yes..I am talking about my project :)) is growing. And I would be happy to see my baby growing up good and serving for the betterment of this world.