Internship!! :)

Having an affair with an internship is perhaps the craziest thing to do but I did end up into this quad core web of love with my summer Internship.  300 Days much had happened CAT-> IIM Indore-> PGP 1-> destiny-> friends>life needless to say the time flied swiftly with these pointers more importantly because of this salubrious epoch was joyous and idyllic. Each second of your life is that fundamental unit  which serves as the foundation of your minutes, hours, days and years to come so one should make sure that he or she is making that each second worth and that was the most important lesson I learnt from my internship.

 Bombay – the maximum metropolis was the destination which where I was to work for this USD 27 Billion Indian Conglomerate ESSAR GROUP in their Corporate Finance Team. I boarded a Jet Airways flight from Jaipur on the 3^rd of April 2012 and was welcomed in a sea facing room on the 24^th Floor of Ashok Towers in South Bombay. The glittering and shimmering city of dreams at 2300 Hrs made me realize that there had to be a swagger in the walk before I started my day the first day ever in office.

The first day in office took me through all the formalities of Access Cards, email address, introductions at the floor and the Corporate Finance Division of Essar Ports – the group company under which I was supposed to do my project, the Cafeteria (more importantly for my appease for the so called diet) and yeah the most important part the project title – Identification and Evaluation of Debt Securities for Infrastructural Projects in India being more specific to ports. The analysis had to be then implemented on a live project in the evaluation of a port.  Coming back to the evening of the day I spent my evening relaxing and deciding on how to decide the course of the project a tedious task though but had no choice because of this hardcore tenacious agreement with the summer internship.

 For the next few days from 0915 hrs to 1915 Hrs google.com was only web address entered into the  google chrome browser as I was still waiting for the confirmation of my final mentor so I wanted to do as much as I could to prevent this OB practice of First Impression Error. But as you know there are incidents in life which make you feel that god is being too kind to you and you really expect to be him that ways at all important phases of your life and one such was the stroke of the clock I met my mentor.
An IIM  L pass out with an excellent acumen of not only dealing with people but also a superfast knight with his key strokes on the project finance models and an excellent exemplifier of why this needs to be done. The day I met him, the first thing he told me after we shook hands was pack your bags I am sending you on a weeklong trip to our company’s port operations at Hazira and Vadinar. 
“I want you to go because understanding operations is a must to understand how the numbers on the balance sheet and income statement are being created” were the words from his euphoric voice and at one I was on my HR’s desk for making the necessary bookings. I boarded the Rajdhani Express for Surat the same evening to welcome of the most thrilling and educative week of my life.

Hazira   21°08′04″N 72°38′52″E India is connected to the high seas of the Gulf of Khambatt is a major port centre as well as one of the biggest industrial belts of India. I was taken to the 550 m long jetty of the Essar Bulk Terminal and was explained as to how this all weather deep draft port has played an important role in streamlining the operations of the group as whole. I was told about the basic terminologies of the ports and how they record revenues in terms of vessel related charges and cargo related charges. Before I lose track and get into more of the technical stuff in one 0.38 mm shot , to be very simple I was experiencing one of the most salubrious real time simulation of being a part of this corporate giant. The Hazira trip also focused certain things on my retina which I had never expected.  Witnessing a land being reclaimed live in the Arabian Sea with that engineers helmet on your head was one of the best experiences I could ever have. Hazira trip did end but brought with it a lot of experience and excitement in this sojourn voyage of life. I went back to Bombay after spending three days in Hazira.

VADINAR 22°24′N 69°43′E I landed in an Air India plane on the Air force station at Jamnagar. The thrill had already begun as I witnessed the IAF fighter jets taking off and landing on the runway live as the aircraft was taxiing to the civil terminal. I was taken to the Essar Oil Club, a plush resort situated on the Vadinar Jamnagar highway to drop my luggage so that I could quickly start with my work and report to the concerned in the comapany’s office in the Essar Oil Refinery complex. I was astounded and my eye lids did not move and blink for minutes after seeing the huge Oil refinery complex and there I could only recall one thing in my mind “ This part of my life means Business “. I was taken to the Oil terminal the next day which was a completely different port as to what I had seen in Hazira with all together a different terminology. My mentor was right you need to understand the business first before you can start making money out of it. Vadinar is one of those beautiful pages of epochs in my life that I would like to revisit often such is its thrill that exists in my mind.

Back to work at Bombay - Engrossing my eyes and engorging my neurons on the project work I did often made visits to the bank to enquire about the current LIBOR spread on the ECB loans, tried mastering the RBI Masters on Infrastructural financing policy in India, called up the IIFCL and enquired into their lending requirements, contacted the IFC’s in India, googled heavily on the existing debt schedules of the infra companies in India, DSCR |ALM |LIBOR| ICDR| NPV| IRR|MIRR| FCFE| FCFF|WACC became my favorite jargons. Presentations did shook hands many a times in the course of the intern but as I was nearing the end I was onto a live model implementing my debt securities mix to save some ( infact handsome)  amount of money for the company .   

If the above intense practices took away mornings, evenings were at peace opposite the Air India building at Marine Drive which made me feel the sea moving through the shores of my soul.  Being a Bombay fanatic I also explored the city in depth by visiting the old colonial buildings in the Fort, enjoying the night at Colaba (Leopold and Mondegar being favorites) , chatting with yellow black taxiwalas, reading the maximum city accounts by Suketu Mehta and finding out that places like Madanpura , Kamathipura, Dongri  and Navpada did exist on the map of Bombay( read more to know more) , the Carter road evenings , the Bandstand sea shore , The high street palladium Emporio Armani and Burberry dreams and the most important of all my room on the 24^th floor which used to pump in trillions of gallons of confidence in me to become something in life.

Before I conclude there is one thing which I always want to recite every morning as  Chetan Bhagat says...."It s ohkk,bunk a few classes,goof up a few interviews..take leave from work..enjoy with your friends...fall in love...we are people not programmed devices” Making an addition to the above “Excellence is not for someone else to notice but for your own satisfaction and efficiency”.
This was my summer internship of 2012. Signing off Shantanu Consul IIM INDORE PGP 2011-2013