After reading all the points described below, if have any doubts you can contact me (shreyas@leadyourbusiness.in) or comment below.

5th Semester Review (writing on 30th September 2025)

Firstly, the subjects in 5th Sem are Web Analytics & Data Science, Consumer Behaviour, Marketing Automation, Media Buying & Planning.

The third year brings a completely different perspective to college life. You are no longer a junior or just another student navigating the campus—you start feeling more responsible, mature, and deeply connected with the college community. By this stage, you often find yourself not just attending lectures but also actively contributing to organizing seminars, supporting events, coordinating with faculty, and guiding juniors.

This transition makes you realize how much you’ve grown since the first year.

One of the biggest lessons from the third year is leadership. Whether it’s handling event responsibilities, setting an example for juniors, or learning how to work as a team, you build qualities that stay with you far beyond academics. The journey also teaches you that your best coordinators, mentors, and even the closest friends will not always be around—so you become strong leader. Many friendships formed in these years truly become bonds for life. In fact, for me personally, college was life-changing because I even met my life partner here—an indirect yet beautiful outcome of this journey.

From an academic standpoint, the experience of internships and projects in the earlier years pays off. By now, you have the confidence to balance studies, company internships, and personal commitments more efficiently. You begin to realize that practical exposure and networking matter just as much as classroom learning. The advantage of third year is the freedom and resources you gain from experience—you know how to get things done.

Another insight I gained was about recognition and self-awareness. This is the phase where you clearly understand who your true friends are, who supports you in tough times, and how to solve problems independently. Building a strong image with faculty, peers, and juniors makes a huge difference—it ensures that whenever you need guidance or support, someone has your back.

On the practical challenges side, one recurring issue is attendance. For many students who work full-time or manage their own businesses alongside college, attendance rules are as per the college mood. Even if you’re working as a full time, you won’t get 50% attendance concession. Attendance concession only for interns & for those who’re having their own business.

I got rejected in internship concession as I was no more an intern.

However Ms. Suparna Deepak (highly supportive) guided me to register for Udhyam Registration and she’ll approve irrespective of LLP registered or not.

However I missed the submission deadline & need to sit for round 2 for 5th Sem. For Udhyam registration, the principal declined and told to come in next semester to get attendance concession.

Before your 5th semester, vivas & projects will happen, those are very simple to appear. Do good revision & concept understanding of technical subjects like GA4 to have high scoring.

Remaining SY BBA Digital Marketing Review (writing on 11th April 2025):

Hope you’ve got some idea & clarity of how it looks to be a BBA DM student in the campus (when you’re the only batch in the entire campus)

Here I’ll give you a brief about some crucial things about Pillai College

Why you can see such emotional posts about Pillai’s Alumni who’re passing from the college and who’re wining in each & every area of life

Pillai’s marketing team is very smart in pursuing you with emotional stories of students form their first year to the 3rd year. Students are on the IG constant checking 3 main IG pages with the main page constantly being active

Continuing where I left off..

In 2025, Pillai college have changed their policy from BBA DM to only BBA and is offering Digital Marketing as a specialisation from the 2nd year to the studetns (you can find the official notice by contacting the admission council)

• I can clearly say, our BBA DM batch is the luckiest one, there’re a few reasons behind it:
  Our program coordinator was Mrs. Priya Ghaloth Mam (super cooperative & would understand you as your 2nd mother). No one in the campus would match the frequency of Priya mam interms of counselling students on any topic (relationship, exam, etc.). Especially I got a lot of constructive learning from her counselling and now she left the campus due to her marriage & relocation to Pune (you may find few pics at Priya mam’s marriage here)

• We got the exposure of core digital marketing subjects from the 1st year itself and being the only batch our feedback was quickly implemented by IIDE
• We got the interaction with a lot of digital marketing professors from the early academic year so the number of projects we would have got from these professors were qualitative and many times internal hiring takes place (even before the intenrship fair starts)

 

Additional Tip In Vacation:

• Innovate something everyday as you’re a DM student and AI is in your hands to build crazy things. So whichever problem you identify , just note your ideas and make it into a tangible form with fast execution (below is the first prototype of our laptop stand that’ll be used for regular commuters to have a productive journey)

• Build a good skill base with real intelligence that’ll overpower infinite intelligence (AI) it means try working on your business ideas that AI can’t solve or notice easily.

 

Go Getter Tip To Proceed To 3rd Year:

• Be highly proactive in noticing & working on anything that goes around you (be a little updated with news)
• Seek mentorship wherever needed as experience always accelerates your progress.

See the below email from Fiverr CEO and why it is necessary to become so good at digital marketing in whichever subfield you’re working:

• Here’re some free resources from my side you can use anytime
• Plus, don’t rely on faculties lecture , just utilise their experience and get quick feedback to grow fast.
• You don’t need to attend every seminar workshop webinar that college throws to you, action is the most powerful word now and measure each second as $1B as each task you’re doing should contribute to the over & above of AI so you could secure your career ASAP

Here’s the initial second year review on 9th July 2024 of BBA in Digital Business/ Digital Marketing at Pillai College, New Panvel (with IIDE’s faculties)

If you’ve not read my FY review of BBA DM (fees, placements, etc. will get cleared) please read that first below then start reading the latest SY initial days.

A) How much supportive is Pillai College towards your ideas?

Here I’ve 2 instances to share based on my personal experience:

• We created a digital indoor campus map (accessible with a single QR) that’ll help students & parents to find any classroom /room easily. It took around 2 months for creating this. Principal & vice principal approved however, after a year still the map hasn’t been displayed on each floor (they told that we’ll display this innovation in our NAAC visit). They’ll support your idea on your face but won’t implement it sooner unless you’re super good at following up
• I & Adithya Iyer (from BBA DM) proposed the idea of revamping the website for a better look & operating with SEO improvements. VP supported our idea by assigning BSc IT, CS & I and Adithya from BBA DM to take up this project & complete in 1.5 months for ease in the admission process. I & Adithya were handling the content part & the IT & CS students were structuring, designing & adding new features and the SEO part was need to be done after the site has been built. All the things were done, even after followups VP & other coordinators didn’t respond once. CS & IT students left the motivation to carry this further, so there was no point in moving forward. This project should get us 2 skill credits delivery to each student (but this didn’t happen). Here are a few glimpses of the new homepage that was in progress to make it live:

 

B) Attendance issue?

In my FY I was particular about my attendance, but that was of no use. In my SY days now, I give more priority to my client projects & internships (as I learn more by doing than listening). Though there’s 75% mandatory, it is easily adjustable (I’ve gone from 60% to 73% in a week). There’s no professional exam made for BBA DM, how can a student give then? There’s no attendance concession for your internship (college like to make you sit in the class).

C) 12 Skill Credits Mandatory?

Till you graduate from BBA DM, you should have 12 skill credits to get the graduation certificate. Try to collect it most of them during FY & SY. College will take you to social activity, introduce courses, take part in competitions, etc. to collect it soon. Get all your certificates in a drive to show at the end of TY to calculate everything.

D) Railway Concession?

This facility is crucial to me as I live in Badlapur, Maharashtra (in Thane district) so it takes almost 2 hours to reach college. In my FY I utilised this well with 1st class pass for 50% concession.

In SY the concession won’t help you anyway, they assign Tuesday (for BBA DM) to collect passes, there are so many excuses the person gives. At the end, college don’t want to take effort for you to coordinate with the Railway office and get it processed fast.

So for SY students atleast for the 1st month, you can get your pass on UTS. From 2nd month you can continue for the quarterly pass from the concession form you had taken.

E) New Faculty or Old Faculty?

Mostly the faculty will be the same as you had in FY. Just a few change in 1-2 subjects who has some experience, but don’t rely on them. Internship & client projects on ground working will give you massive learnings than daily lecture.

As I’m writing on 9th July 2024, a few days we’ve online lectures due to rain issues. If you’re living far from college (atleast 80-90 KM away), in monsoon choose safety over lecture attendance. Though you may have other options to travel, you can’t tell the changing weather. College sometimes get the notification in the morning until then long distance students are already left for their daily lectures. So be close to your coordinator for the rain related updates.

If your internship is distance from Pillai College, it should have the faciility of work from home in extreme monsoon. My internship is in Andheri Chakala, so I’ve the fortunate employer to give me all the required adjustments.

Single message for SY students, this is the year where you see the magic of your career, avoid the romantic relationship, unnecessary habits, hanging with friends, etc. World is changing very fast, be highly dynamic & massive action taker on your skills.

From here starts my FY in BBA DM review:

Let’s start with the internship & placement offers…

This was the Digital Indoor Campus Map created by me, Aditya Iyer, Vineet Singh & Rafiq Shaikh (Leon Mendes was our supporting staff)

This was the last lecture of Commercial Designing subject of Priyanka Jadhav mam. On this day we were playing blocks w.r.t. matching colors & creating different structures: