Ami Pandya

The think tank of M360°, Ms. Ami Pandya is the one who conceptualized Marketing360°. For her words can create magic and she spoke to us about her time in IBS, her views on internship and placements and how her experience in Marketing360° is helping her to excel in her career. Let’s know what this marketing maniac has to say:

Please tell us about your IBS journey.So if I have to describe my IBS journey, in a nutshell, the following 3 things have had a great impact on me:

• Marketing360°

• International Marketing Conference

• Summer Internship Programme

What the above events have taught me, no syllabus or curriculum could have. In M360° I created my own start up, I can proudly say that with the support of my best friends and guidance of Prof. Priyanka Dhingra, I have managed a team that comprised of 60 people. My IBS journey especially in the second year had turned into Eat—Marketing360°–Sleep–Repeat.

During IMC, I have come across a lot of people from the industry and learnt a lot from them. While my SIP changed my entire perspective towards professional life to a great extent.

Everyone says that experiences change you for good. We are curious to know how M360° has managed to change you as a person:

If you ask my friends about me they’ll tell you that I am a total nutcase. I would manage to get excited about everything new that would come our way, be happy for the smallest things and turn emotional for the tiniest goof-up.

Initially, I was a bubbly, chirpy, and extremely child- like (the third part I still am!), but after M360° happened there was a sense of responsibility that kicked in.

I strongly believe that responsibility helps you transform positively, so when we got a lot of people together for M360^O I realised that if I wanted to be taken seriously I could not appear as a kid trying to do something big backed up with a strong support system from her favourite faculty member.

This helped me turn into someone who would plan, prepare and then take decisions rather than acting on an impulse.

What was your major role in Marketing360°?

As founding members we divided our key areas of responsibility based on our expertise. We never planned on doing things in a certain way, it was simply the fact that we knew each other too well to let different people take up different responsibilities.

Ketan took over coordination and internal functionality management (operations), Ankur has been the tech guru and continues to be one, Vaibhav was the finance guy one who would keep marketing maniacs grounded and I was the one who looked after content and communications.

During the process I came to know and understand my team better and this helped us immensely. People management which involved communication with the entire team, giving people the opportunity to self-evaluate their performance and the performance of our portal, mentoring and guiding the juniors were all tasks that I took up along with providing inputs to the content team.

What do you think makes M360° different from the other clubs at IBS?

Marketing360° is different from any other club in IBS in many aspects. Firstly it is the kind of work we offer, unlike other clubs which gave their members an opportunity to work on events happening once or twice a year, we give them an opportunity to perform every day and their work got recognition as well.

Generally extracurricular make you rich in experience but that is a long drawn process, in M360°, we believed in giving to the students immediate gains and making the process a win-win for both sides. We tried to give them the opportunity, skill set, confidence, recognition and most importantly the knowledge that could help them sail through their professional life with ease.

Today every industry maintains that being updated with the current happenings in the world is crucial and M360° is entirely a news-based platform. Working with us by default gives the team knowledge, insight into the world and helps them to gain understanding of current affairs.

We also give them an opportunity to work on real-time basis, adhere to deadlines and at the end of every week make them deliver a product. This experience helps students to excel in whatever path they take up in future.

The difference was in the little things, like in other clubs students would sit for seminars and conferences, in M360° we organised them.

Please describe your SIP and share some tips and tricks to excel in SIP.

I did my internship with Tata Institute of Social Sciences where I worked on the CLIx (Connected Learning Initiative) project. This project the outcome of a collaboration between Tata Trusts (India), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Cambridge, Mass., USA) and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS, Mumbai, India). CLIx has been created to provide young people from under-served communities’ opportunities for participation in quality education offerings through the meaningful integration of technology.

CLIx provides engaging, hands-on learning experiences in Mathematics, Science, and Communicative English, as well as digital literacy through the i2C (Invitation to CLIx) platform, integrated with value education and skills relevant to the 21st century

For an MBA student to step into a completely new world of the social and developmental industry, was slightly difficult initially. Here I worked with their website, social media and newsletter among other tasks and the experience that I acquired here have helped me immensely at M360 and my current place of employment as well.

Some advice for fellow students would be to not treat their SIP as a vacation. Learn as much as you can and not restrict yourselves to the designated department. Interact as much as you can various departments and build contacts. Be ready to work hard, and not consider any task too small.

5 Tips and tricks to excel in an interview:

1. Strong domain knowledge- One cannot compromise on it.

2. Appearances matter- Be well groomed when you go for an interview.

3. Be Honest- Be honest in your answers. If you don’t know, say you don’t know. Do not bluff.

4. Be confident- Just be confident, no overconfidence or under-confidence. Just “Confidence”

5. Don’t expect anything- Just go with the flow. Don’t be bigoted.

Ami Pandya is currently working as Research Associate with Observer Research Foundation (ORF). She has completed her PGPM from IBS Mumbai and Bachelor in Management Studies (BMS) from University of Mumbai. She is an avid reader and a blogger. She loves learning new words.