Summer internship at Health at Home company
Hello everyone! I am Chananchida Choochua, or you can call me Chanan. I am currently a year 2 student at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, majoring in Integrated BBA in Entrepreneurship and Quantitative Marketing.
During my summer period in the year of 2020, I came back to my hometown, Bangkok, Thailand, and I did a summer internship as a Business Development and Marketing Intern at Health at Home company, a health-tech startup for delivering a caregiver to the patient or elderly’s house. From this internship, I have gained a lot of experience in terms of both business knowledge and life skills. Therefore, I would like to share what I have learned from this internship.
I was a business development and marketing intern, so my tasks were divided into 2 main roles, business development, and marketing.
BD: Business development
Regarding a business development role, I managed the opening of the company’s subsidiary named Health at Home Academy, which was a nursing school of the company. The reason for expanding this subsidiary was an insufficient supply (caregiver) to the demand (patient or elderly). Moreover, nursing school can help build an ecosystem for the company. In order to validate whether the opening of Health at Home Academy was feasible, I built the business model of Health at Home Academy and identified the customer segment and value proposition. By analyzing the customer segment, I collected insights from both potential customers, which were people who were interested to be a caregiver, and existing nursing school.
My other project as a business development role was a medical product dropshipping. The reason behind this project was that some kinds of homecare medical equipment were still necessary for discharged patients and elderly. Health at Home company would like to dropship homecare medical products, as there were a number of Health at Home’s customers seeking for a recommendation on home-used medical products such as an oxygen concentrator, an Anti-decubitus mattress, and a phlegm suction machine. My tasks were, collecting the customer demand for medical products from the customer service department and contacting the medical product’s suppliers.
Marketing: Online+Offline
Regarding a marketing role, I did both offline and online marketing for Health at Home company. For offline marketing, I did bus advertising. The left side of the bus advertised the recruiting of caregivers because it could increase eyeballs from potential caregivers from the bus stops. The back of the bus advertised Health at Home service, as most of the target customers were using cars and Thailand is infamous for traffic congestion, so the target group could see the advertisement while they were on the road.
For the online marketing task, I wrote the contents and posted pictures or videos onto Health at Home Facebook page. Furthermore, I also suggested the company to do online marketing on LinkedIn, in order to gain more brand awareness.
Life skills & Culture
Apart from business skills, especially in business development and marketing, I have also learned some life skills from Health at Home company. Growth mindset, agility, and empathy are Health at Home company’s culture. As a result, I have learned to have a growth mindset by turning obstacles to be opportunities and believing that everything is possible.
I have learned to be agile. Think fast execute fast. For example, I was assigned to do online marketing for Health at Home Academy, once I decided to do the video ads, my team and I started shooting immediately and published the video within one week after the task was assigned. Agility helps the company and me as an individual to adapt to the rapid change of the business world.
I also have learned to empathize with people. Empathy helps me a lot when I collected insights from customers. Without empathy, I cannot understand customer pain points and identify unmet needs.
In addition, I have gained an intimate friendship here. During the two-month internship, my colleagues and I have explored restaurants around the office and traveled together quite often. Besides, my CEO also lent me some books I wanted to read, including “What I wish I knew when I was 20” and “Marketing 4.0” which enable me to pick up business insights and knowledge.
Last but not least, I would like to thank you Health at Home company for accepting my application to be an intern and mentoring me throughout my internship period. Thank you, everyone, I met at Health at Home, I extremely enjoyed the internship. I could say that this was the best internship experience I had this summer.
Despite my internship ended, the relationship would last forever.
