Developing strategy as a services and IT infrastructure sharing for telecom sector; ESSAR, Mumbai

Abstract

The internship at Essar was a very different experience. The total batch of interning students compromised of little more than 50 students selected from the top management schools across the country including liMA, B, C, L, K, MDI, NITIE, SP Jain; HFT, XLRI and SCMHRD. The total stint of internship was spread across 8 weeks with the first week spent on induction and last week was presentation to panel. Induction program included talks with the senior executives from Essar Group including some of CEOs, CFOs and CLOs. They introduced us to Essar culture and capabilities and taught some management lessons very crucial in corporate life. We also got a chance to interact with employees from various management schools who joined Essar. Through out the 8 weeks there were continuous interactions with Top Managers through Top Talk. A 3 day visit was organized to Hazira Plant at Gujarat, where we got an opportunity to see how steel is manufactured and also got the chance to look at Power generation. The plants-arehumongous with a production capacity of 5.1 million tonne per annum (MTPA) and 515MW of power generation. After the induction, all students were assigned a project and a mentor guide. I got the project on developing telecom strategy for Software as a Service and IT infrastructure sharing for Telecom. I was working under Ashwin Shah, CIO, Essar Telecom and also got chance to interact with Rajiv Sawhney, CEO, Essar Telecom, who happens to be from lIMB-and nave headed Vodafone Delhi operations and has been the president at Vodafone Indonesia. The project gave me a chance to interact with some senior people in the telecom domain and I also got the chance to meet with many senior executives at Loop Mobile. The pattern of report study was to carry out research on Saas and meet with project guide atleasi.a.'Week.-I, did analysis on SaaS and recommended the strategy and platform to be used to emrace Saa8. During the last week of internship I presented my findings and recommendation to the panel that included CIO from Essar Telecom and some other senior managers and submitted the report to my guide and HR. During the stint, we were also supposed to present a paper and give a presentation on management lesson from a movie. I presented a paper on Cultural issues related with MnA and suggested way to tackle the problem. It was none as a joint effort by me and another intern student from 11FT. I also presented leadership lesson from the movie Lagaan to a team of around 15 employees. The internship process was full of challenges and provided lot of learning opportunities.