Internship Description
Ankit Dhingra ’20 interned with Hatch, a digital marketplace launched in Australia that matches people to meaningful paid professional work comprised of 3-12-month projects. During COVID-19, Hatch implemented the Hatch Exchange to rapidly redeploy furloughed workers to roles where they are most needed. Ankit worked to develop their growth strategy for the US market. Ankit's main responsibilities included end-to-end market sizing, competitor analysis, financial modeling, and product design specifically for the US market.
Hatch is an Australian tech startup whose mission is for all people to find meaning in work. The platform is an agile student talent marketplace of thousands of interesting, meaningful paid opportunities for all college/university students. Their goal is to be a global company and eventually have students around the world find meaningful, paid work experience through their product, and for companies to be easily matched on demand with student talent predicted to perform in their environment.
My project was to analyze whether Hatch should expand to the US market and then devise the go-to-market strategy for this expansion. This included an overall analysis of the recruiting tech market in the United States, identifying gaps in this market and then drilling down to see how Hatch’s product could help serve unmet needs. I, along with my co-intern, Jen Chiang ’21, collected this information through customer interviews, competitor, market and legal analyses. We then devised the go-to-market strategy for Hatch, complete with our recommendation for the value proposition, the business model(s), and an estimate of the financials to achieve desired market share.
The project primarily revolved around go-to-market strategy, and I had to draw on the learning from my different strategy courses at Columbia Business School. For financial analysis and forecasting, I applied the skillset developed through MBA classes such as Financial Accounting, Financial Statement Analysis, and Financial Planning & Analysis.
Given the global COVID-19 pandemic, the biggest challenge was the fully remote nature of the internship. In order for us to devise a go-to-market strategy for Hatch, we first had to understand their current product, and do a deep dive into product development, engineering, data science, and marketing. Although we scheduled interactions with these teams over Zoom, it would have been better to have in-person interactions, in order for us to capture more nuances around the product.
It has been a pleasure working with the team at Hatch — a great group of passionate and talented people. It has helped me understand the recruiting tech space better and also strengthen my skill set in business model design and marketing. I enthusiastically recommend the Social Enterprise Summer Fellowship to any future CBS student interested in the social enterprise space.