Internship Spotlight: Pranav Daryanani ’22, Bain & Company
Pranav Daryanani ’22 on spending the summer working on an environmental strategy consulting project.
What did you do this past summer? We asked second-year MBA students to check in from their summer internships, where they applied the lessons of their first year at Yale SOM.
Pranav Daryanani ’22
Internship: Bain & Company, Jakarta, Indonesia
Hometown: Bali, Indonesia
Pronouns: he/him/his
Clubs and Affiliations: Southeast Asia Club
Favorite SOM Class: Entrepreneurship in the Art Market
Favorite SOM Professor: Kyle Jensen
Favorite New Haven eatery: Koffee?
Bonus facts: SOM has a little surfer community, and we recently did a group trip to Rhode Island!
Almost 10 years ago I left my island hometown of Bali, Indonesia, to go out and explore what the world had to offer. Ironically, the journey is often the other way around: people often come to Bali to find their purpose—remember the “eat, pray, love” phase? However, after living across Bangalore, London, Frankfurt, and now New Haven, I’ve come to the realization that the MBA program could serve as a launchpad back home. Therefore, I searched for an internship that would allow me to use the lessons and experiences I gathered from around different parts of the world to help shape positive change and support economic growth back home.
This summer Bain & Company offered me the opportunity to intern back home in Southeast Asia. However, with the Delta variant spreading through the region, up until two weeks before the start date, the internship location was a toss up between their offices in Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore. In my view, the fact that these options were even being discussed was testament to the presence Bain had within the region and the potential to work within a diverse, exciting environment. Eventually, given the rise of COVID cases, I ended up back at home working virtually by the beach in Bali, Indonesia. This meant that along with learning the consulting toolkit, I could improve my surfing, spend more time with family, and explore some diving spots—not bad for work-life balance.
On the professional side, I got to work within a case team composed of members across Singapore, Indonesia, the Middle East, and Germany. Together, we worked on a case that involved designing a national environmental strategy for a country that integrated the public sector, civil society, and businesses to achieve sustainable growth. Personally, I was surprised at the level of responsibility expected from a Bain & Company summer associate and was grateful for the foundation built at business school. For example, within the case, my project was to help create a governance model that would support strategy execution and ensure coordination and communication across stakeholders. Core classes such as the Workforce and State & Society, combined with my prior experience, instilled in me a skill set that I could leverage to work in a global team and ensure I could deliver on the project.
Moreover, the curriculum at Yale and its focus on business and society was an ideal match for an environmental strategy consulting project. It showed firsthand that the school’s mission and focus aptly reflected a shift of businesses focusing outward to shape positive change. Also, the strength of Yale’s alumni community meant that I found friends and mentors throughout the application and internship process within Bain’s Southeast Asia office. In short, I strongly believe that the MBA program, the internship experience, and the people I’ve met along the way provide the ideal launchpad for my professional journey back home. And I guess it doesn’t hurt to potentially live near some of the world’s best beaches...