Caregiving, education, travel, to focus on health – reasons behind taking a career break can be anything. However, it is not a secret that job search for women after a career break can be a daunting task. From lack of opportunities to fear of bias during interviews, the entire job hunt experience can seed some serious self-doubt amongst women professionals who are returning from a break.

All these self-doubts can be taken care of if these women are given the right opportunities and support. And one such initiative to support women and reignite their career path is the Phoenix program – Myntra’s initiative designed for women on a career break to make a smooth transition to their new job role. As an organization, we believe in empowering women, and to further strengthen our commitment we launched Phoenix. Diversity and Inclusion sit at the heart of many initiatives we have in place across the organization. The six-month internship is aimed at giving women who want to get back to work an opportunity to work on projects with real impact, get support from mentors, and most importantly, inculcate a sense of belonging at the workplace.

Recently, we spoke to Ananya Samantara who kickstarted her career 2.0 with Myntra’s Phoenix program after a 3 year gap. “I was not a data analyst before, so when I joined Myntra as a data analyst intern, I was not sure of the transition. But my manager and teammates were supportive throughout my internship tenure. My internship was purely based on interaction-based learning. It gave me an opportunity to work with a team which is very established in its role. Soon, I got a hang of the Myntra culture, what my team does and what my role required,” she says.

Ananya is very proud of the projects she worked on during those six months. “One major project which I was part of during my internship was related to DDP where data analysts run their queries. So, you can say that was our base for working. We did a migration from DDP to another query tool called Bifrost. From the CC team, I was the major contributor in this project,” she says.

Another noteworthy experience for Ananya was working for the EORS. “As compared to normal days, during EORS, a large volume of data is generated and analysed by my team. My job was to keep the reports ready so that they would come in handy, whenever required. Working with a large volume of data was a great experience. The entire EORS period was really fun and exciting,” she says.

Ananya now works as a Data Analyst in the Myntra Customer Care, WFM (Workforce Management) and Analytics team. Her story is a great example of the fact that a career break isn’t necessarily a roadblock or a full stop. With the right support from an organisation, people on a career gap can bounce back with flying colours. Today, Ananya has successfully overcome her hesitation to work again and is learning something new everyday, all set to achieve her professional goals.

As the name indicates, rising from the ashes, born anew and more fabulous than ever – that’s what Myntra’s six-month internship program, Phoenix, is all about. To apply for the Phoenix program, you can go to Myntra’s Career Website, take a look at the job descriptions, job roles, and apply. All the participants of the program receive the same benefits as a regular employee including insurance, wellness leave, covid-extended support, etc.