First week!

Since the end of February, I very much looked forward to my summer internship working in India as a WDI fellow with Start Up!, an angel investor, incubator and consulting firm that strives to launch, strengthen, and scale social ventures in India, and now it has become reality.

It’s been close to a week since I landed in New Delhi, India, with no working phone and no sense of direction. While the first few days were rough in getting used to the different pace and infrastructure of life here in Delhi, I now have a working phone and become accustomed to the random honking, constant haggling for an auto rickshaw ride, and of course, the intense summer heat (109 degrees Fahrenheit today!). Thankfully, I’m now more in the know of the various neighborhoods, what each area has to offer, and how to haggle a decent price with the auto rickshaws. 

Furthermore, my stomach has been fairly content with the level of spicyness it gets to indulge in every day :) In addition to the spice, I even got to try some Himalayan food in Hauz Khas Village.  This is the Yeti special non-veg (clockwise starting with the tingmo (the white bun - tastes like a chinese mantou), lungs, tongue, sausage, and meat).

I've also made a few new friends along the way, especially since I'm one of the early birds here in Delhi. Knowing other people here has definitely helped make the transition less daunting. 

As for my internship, I started this past Monday, and I can already tell that it’s going to be a busy summer but in a good way.

Start Up! was founded in 2007 and since then has partnered with social ventures in the non-profit and for-profit continuum. These social ventures are ones that aim to maximize philanthropic capital in the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). The Start Up! office and team are small, vastly different from my past work experiences in corporate America. However, it’s great because this means many opportunities to take ownership in my projects and take the initiative to grow and learn more about the social enterprise space in India.

I have several internal and external projects to pass my time for the next 12-13 weeks, apply what I learned this past year at Ross, and further refine my business skills. Internally, I will be developing a refined business plan and financial model for Start Up!, creating a business plan for Start Up!’s business accelerator with two other interns who will be joining me soon, and reviewing the design of an incubation toolkit for internal use. My external project is expected to be evaluating the market feasibility of a social enterprise.  They provide young semi-urban Indian women with an online platform to share their thoughts on various issues through video blogs. I’m definitely looking forward to working with an organization whose mission is to empower women.

That’s all from me for now. I will take more pictures soon. I'm looking forward to hanging out with the WDI Fellows who will be joining me here in India very soon!