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Summer 2019

Summer Diaries:Redseer Consulting Ltd

July 27, 2019
- Dhruv Singh

Redseer Consulting Ltd is a boutique firm in the field of research based management and strategy consulting.A boutique is a classification of the firms based on their scale of operations, as they focus on a limited number of services. Unlike major consulting firms, boutique firms are highly specialized rather than offering general consulting services. The firm sits neatly between two worlds, research and consulting. In some ways, it is like IMRB, a market research survey firm. In other ways, it is like a McKinsey or a Bain & Co, where it consults startups on entry strategy into new markets, new business verticals, growth strategy, cost reduction and the evergreen bestseller—generic trends.

Making it there:

As a fresher, I always knew I was never going to find interest in Chemical core subjects and I knew I always had a thing for business.I have always believed that you don’t have to do something because the rest of the world is doing it, that will make you quit in some time, you only do something once you know you have the curiosity and zeal to do the thing for the next fifteen years. I did try my hand at web development, design and data analytics in my freshman year but I could never find the perfect blend of things that I knew I loved to do. That curiosity led me into joining E-Cell and that’s where I got to learn more about the various facets of the startup and business ecosystem. I got to know about roles with a mixture of various conventional roles.

My first internship was at a startup named Wheelstreet. I was a “Business Development Intern”, and worked towards making new expansion strategies and designing marketing campaigns for them. It was here that I knew that business and strategy was my thing. I liked data analytics as well, so my second internship was that of an “Operations Analyst” at a startup named 1mg in the medical e-commerce space. Here I worked on optimising the processes involved in the supply chain and logistics of medicines by working on sets of data and implementing the strategies. My target was to significantly reduce the error percentage and the Turn Around Time(TAT) of delivery. I really loved that I was able to take data driven steps to improve their business and make an impact. I met a lot of alumni throughout both of my internships and got to realise that my interests align with the world of consultancy. I met a consultant from Bain and he explained to me what kind of work consultants do and what is expected from a consultant in big corporates. That is when I thought it might be a perfect idea to try a hand at consulting.

When my third year started, I was inclined towards Consulting, Business Analytics & Product Management and I was also aware of the need to apply off campus for the same, as a majority of the companies visiting campus for internship don’t offer roles with these profiles. Having networked with a lot of alumni and startups since I was part of the campus groups that majorly dealt with them, I began reaching out to people on LinkedIn and my personal connections and sought guidance so that I could further filter down on the aforementioned fields. People are usually more helpful on LinkedIn if you ask for general career advice. An alumnus who has been through the same phase is more likely to help, than the conventional method of mass messaging for referrals opted by students. This way you can easily connect personally with the person and the chances that he might refer you somewhere increase multifold.

I started preparing in November(conventionally, you can safely start applying by February-March) and finalised my CV/Resume and Cover Letter by the end of November. Now, the first step was building a well-rounded and attractive LinkedIn profile. After building one, I started connecting to a lot of 2nd degree connections who are currently pursuing the fields I was interested in. For those who are new to LinkedIn, 2nd degree connections are people who are connected to your 1st degree connections. You’ll see a 2nd degree icon next to their name in search results and on their profile. I used to send a template message to each one of them. For example, if I’m reaching out to someone in a consulting firm, my message went like this-“Hello Sir/Ma’am, I’m currently a 3rd-year undergrad at IIT Roorkee. I have a deep interest in management consulting and strategy oriented roles. Your mentorship could be vital for me to pursue my interests. Could you please guide me in the right direction? It would be great to connect over call sometime.” My conversion rate was significantly higher than what people get when they blatantly ask someone for a referral.

So, after talking to a lot of people, I narrowed down to Strategy & Consulting roles as an optimal career choice for me to pursue for the Summers of 2019. I had made an excel sheet of the companies I was targeting and in a couple of weeks, I had connected to a lot of alumni, HRs and executives of those companies.

This approach got me interviews with a handful of companies and startups with a variable tradeoff between quality of work & the quality of firm. I ended up choosing Redseer since I knew a couple of alumni here and that gave me added assurance of quality of work. My interview process involved a lot of emphasis on guesstimates and case studies.

Work

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The office is based out of Bengaluru. My internship was that of a “Business Analyst”, wherein I worked directly under an Associate Consultant and one of the Directors was assigned to me as my mentor throughout the internship. I was lucky enough to work on multiple projects throughout my internship. I’ll be explaining each one of the projects and my involvement and responsibilities in the same. Redseer has a vertical work structure with a lot of emphasis on the entrepreneurial environment of work and a lot depends on your sense of ownership in any project. There are a lot of people from Tier-1 colleges on every level and that really helped me in mixing up with people and led me towards building strong professional and personal connections. The work hours were typically 9:30AM to 6:30PM but most of the times people used to stretch because of the demanding nature of work.

I was initially assigned to two projects, the first was an internal project. Our goal was to build a portal where Redseer clients & employees can login and view business metrics, consumer data etc. for industries which are tracked on a monthly basis. The user shall have the liberty to set customized search criterion for convenience, comparison and better visualization of specific e-commerce industries. I had to record the statistics of major e-tailing players on a set of 17 key parameters employing benchmarking techniques to understand current outlook of e-tailing industry for 2 years. My work also involved basics of Product Management and SQL. I had Amit Anand, another intern from IIT Roorkee with me who worked on the end to end development part.

The second project was for a fund which was looking to evaluate a certain target firm in the B2B E-commerce space for potential assessment. So, we were supposed to do Commercial Due Diligence(CDD) for the same. For those of you who are not familiar with it, Commercial Due Diligence is the process a corporation or private equity firm undertakes to gauge a company’s commercial attractiveness. Unlike financial due diligence, which focuses solely on the financial health of the company, commercial due diligence provides a full overview of the target’s internal and external environment. I had to assess the B2B E-commerce market landscape of India, analysing the online penetration with focus on Industrial supplies, assessing the competitive landscape in the B2B E-commerce market and business model of key players. I had to perform performance benchmarking of the ‘target firm’ in terms of business model, unit economics and key metrics. Along with this, we had to perform a future assessment of the ecosystem and emerging business models. This project was an overall test of my abilities and it was an enriching experience to get to work on a CDD as an intern and understanding the whole B2B E-commerce market scenario. One of the best bits of work you could get as an intern in consulting.

After completing work on one of the projects, I was staffed on an international project for one of the largest global investment companies which was looking for companies in the Indonesian E-commerce space to include in its portfolio. So we had to assess the whole B2C E-commerce landscape in Indonesia. Understanding consumer sentiment, logistical issues, growth drivers & unit economics in Indonesia were some of the key challenges in the project. So, a few of the employees flew to Indonesia to take IDIs(In-Depth Interviews). After conducting consumer and seller surveys on a large scale, we managed to understand the market structure and segmentation and estimated the total addressable market along with the future scope in the E-Tailing, digital goods and B2B market in Indonesia. This project gave me an end-to-end in depth overview of the Indonesian E-commerce market and also added a new perspective as to how international projects are carried out at such a scale.

Now, for the final phase of my internship, I was inducted as a member of the Redseer advisory team for leading Private Equity firms/Venture Capitalists. The team was responsible for demystifying the E-commerce, logistics(3PL & Captive) & Digital Payments landscape in India. This helped me understand the roots of the logistics space in India and realise what the growth drivers are and geometrical segmentation is by conducting competitive benchmarking of the 7 major players in logistics. It helped me understand what the growth drivers are while analysing the performances of the various horizontals, verticals and super verticals in the ecosystem. Also, breaking down the E-commerce market helped me realise who the market leaders are and where the future of E-Tailing in India is headed.

Summing up and key takeaways:

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The learnings were many be it interacting with clients, getting exposure to the industry, going on the ground or being within close doors and thinking about structuring the problem at hand. But some that particularly left me spellbound were:

Story-lining: I learnt the art of conveying a presentation in the form of a story, highlighting key takeaways for each slide. This ensured I had the attention of my audience and conveyed my point in a crisp and precise way.

Elevator Pitch: I understood the importance of having an answer ready at all times. Whether it was an update I had to give in a case team meeting or an explanation when the client questioned my hypothesis, I ensured I was well prepared and had an answer at hand. It was greatly valued and reflected my confidence and hard work.

Over-communication: It was always better to communicate the minutest detail which I felt could be important to the team. It was a trade-off to being precise but it ensured the team didn’t get any surprises at a later stage.

Deliverable-Oriented Approach: A good consultant always prefers to be “accurate enough” than to be “precisely accurate”. As a consultant, you’ll make decisions like this frequently, which is why interviewers screen out candidates who are uncomfortable with “accurate enough” since you cannot take a prolonged time going for preciseness when you could have saved a ton of money and time with an accurate enough answer that would work for the client.

Over the almost three months, I worked at Redseer, the amount of learning and experience I gained was tremendous. I worked with a lot of people and on a lot of exciting projects where I was able to find out my weaknesses and strong points and work towards being a better professional. Most of all, one should always be able to make a concrete decision around his/her career path after an internship and I was able to derive one for me.