I joined the Plentify growth team and worked directly over the summer with the co-founder and chief of growth Kailas Nair. Plentify developed a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence-based platform that transforms water heaters into smart thermal batteries that can dynamically shift load while ensuring users always have hot water whenever needed. After launching in South Africa, the Plentify team wanted to capitalize on the capabilities and skills it accumulated throughout its journey, to expand into new markets and gain scale and a financial boost. In that context, my work was focused on exploring the European market, largely untapped and only a little understood by the firm. My daily tasks were equally balanced between strategy and business development.

From a strategic perspective, my initial mission was to understand what would constitute a good market for Plentify. For that reason, I created a framework to identify and screen detailed requirements across the various European countries mainly across two dimensions. This framework will be adopted to assess any new market entry going forward. Electricity market: electricity price, consumption, market consolidation, regulatory framework, advancement in demand side electricity management programs, etc. For the water heater market: adopted water heating technology, technology trend, compatibility requirements with Plentify, etc.

Following this framework allowed us to prioritize markets in Europe based on their market characteristics and shortlist seven potential markets where the product market assessment revealed substantial potential. Subsequently, we deep dived into each market to formulate a detailed go-to-market strategy after conducting a detailed analysis, including the competitive landscape, potential channels, potential demand services that could be enabled via our technology, among many others. The end result on this front was a detailed strategy approach for each of the priority market, explaining in a very structured, yet tailored, way what aspect of our value proposition to focus on in each market, and what channels to pursue.

My work was far from being theoretical. In parallel to the strategy work, and since the very beginning of the project, we were actively engaging in business development calls to validate our findings, vet interest, and launch discussions with potential partners and, most importantly, clients. We had insightful expert calls with partners and potential clients that validated the market opportunity and valuable leads that have the potential to deliver the required impact for Plentify.

One of the key skills one gains from the MBA is the critical thinking and problem solving skills. Over a very short period of time, I had to gain a lot of knowledge of the energy industry and of Plentify’s product in order to be able to select the right markets and hold insightful conversations with industry experts (with the founders, business development calls, etc.). This involved breaking down large problems into smaller addressable ones, understanding each step of the energy value chain, and processing large amounts of data and documents to solve each individual question. Keeping a structure and an 80-20 prioritization rule in mind were essential for the success of the project. The entrepreneurial skills I gained at CBS allowed me to view things better from the co-founders’ point of view, ranginv from the impact that they would like to see, to the right level of details to go to. On a more personal level, the MBA allowed me to gain more confidence while engaging with senior counterparts, and to build strong, genuine rapport with people from various backgrounds and cultures, which was very valuable in this role, especially throughout the business development conversations.

At the beginning of my internship, the main assumption was that Germany is the market with the biggest opportunity for Plentify. The initial scope of work was centered on Germany solely. However, at the end of the first week, findings were pointing in the opposite direction; it was almost clear to me that Germany is not the appropriate market for Plentify. After validating this through business development calls, I shared the findings with the co-founders, and we quickly decided to switch gears and expand our assessment from Germany to all 28 European Union countries.

Another challenge was triggered by a tragic event that occurred in my home country, where I was working remotely. On August 4, 2020, the largest non-nuclear explosion in history occurred at the Beirut port. I was working in my garden when this happened. While my house or immediate family or friends weren’t directly affected, I, like other Lebanese, was shocked and extremely saddened by the scale of this event. For the first following days, I couldn’t wait to finish work to join my friends on the ground in the impacted area to support in the cleaning of the damaged houses. It was indeed challenging to maintain focus in the midst of such a storm. For several weeks, it still felt that the explosion had happened yesterday. I was waking up to a news feed filled with anger, sadness, grief. I had to delete several social media platforms to create my own bubble, owning the feeling of guilt that comes with that, but understanding the need to move on.

Working directly with the co-founders has taught me a lot about the entrepreneurs’ mindset, their passion about the different aspects of their area of focus, their hard work on a daily basis, and their persistence when facing difficulties. As a person who is interested in one day launching my own startup, I have now a best-in-class benchmark to compare myself and my skillset to before I decide to venture on such a journey. In addition, the internship allowed me to develop extensive knowledge about the energy space in general and gain solid insights on the potential of adopting digital energy innovation, with a focus on home utilities.

From a technical perspective, I have advanced over the summer my business development capabilities, a task I have not done much in my consulting career. I discovered that business development is an art in itself, and in many ways resembles fishing; while people attribute the success of catching a fish to luck and blind persistence, it is not. It has to do more with solid planning and preparation, targeting the right untapped areas, at the right time, with the right tool. It also requires a lot of patience, as timing is key.

Finally, throughout the internship, I adapted smoothly to the work-from-home model and learned practices for effective remote daily operations and align with managers and project stakeholders.