Page 82 - PPO Diaries

PPO Diaries

❖ A brief overview of the project
I interned with Amazon in the MLDP- Marketplace
Leadership Development Program. I worked with the
Amazon Re-commerce team to restore value for the
products that are returned by customers. Once a returned
product arrives at the warehouse, it is graded based on its
condition and damages incurred during transit. The
returned item is then accordingly relisted on website, sold
as refurbished product or liquidated to secondary sales
markets. My project falls under the third category-
liquidation, which is a program that ensures fast and
consistent outflow of unsellable inventory that is not

addressed by any of the higher recovery channels. The
ROHAN DHAKITE objective of my project was to devise strategy to increase

AMAZON the current liquidation capacity, to identify new channels
for liquidation as well as to benchmark the liquidation
__________________________________________ process against other major ecommerce players.

GENERAL INFORMATION
❖ How is the normal day at the internship?
Batch: PGDIM 25 Any typical day at Amazon is like Day 1- the environment is
like a start-up with things moving really fast. I used to reach
BTech: NIT, Nagpur office at 9am, one hour before my team arrived. In the first
hour, I used to plan my work according to the targets I had
Work Ex: ZS Associates set and accordingly schedule meetings with the

Stakeholders in my project. My work involved collaboration with cross functional teams to a large extent,

hence these meetings consumed major portion of my working hours. After my team left, I used to stay

back at office for conducting various analyses, working on the project report and planning for the next

day.

❖ What are the challenges faced during Internship?

During the initial days of my project, I had to work hard on getting clarity on my project charter because

there was ambiguity regarding the deliverables. I later realised that this ambiguity exists in the ecommerce

industry as there is not enough literature or used cases available for reference. One must brainstorm the
problem and then validate the solutions by talking to the experts. Looking retrospectively, I realised that

putting efforts in the initial days to eliminate this ambiguity provided me a head-start and hence I could

achieve my targets within stipulated 8 weeks.

❖ What did you do right and what did you do wrong?
Right- I updated the progress of my project daily to my mentor/manager. This helped me rectify my
solutions if needed and aligned me with what was expected of me, thus reducing rework scenarios.

Wrong- I had drafted a business contract with one of the wholesale vendors, which didn’t go through due
to legal complications. If the contract would have actualised, I would have been able to conduct a pilot to

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