Internships for B.Com Students in India: Where to Start

B.Com students have more internship routes than most people realise: accounts and bookkeeping, taxation and GST, audit assistance, banking and insurance, financial analysis, and general business roles. The best entry point is a local chartered accountant’s office, a small company’s accounts team or a finance startup, and the skill that opens most doors is working Excel plus basic familiarity with accounting software.

Roles, stipends and requirements vary by city and firm. Use this as a map and check each offer on its own terms.

What commerce internships look like

• Accounts and bookkeeping. Entering vouchers, reconciling bank statements, preparing ledgers. Usually in accounting software such as Tally or a cloud tool. Dull at times, but it teaches the mechanics of how money moves through a business.
• Taxation and GST. Collecting invoices, preparing returns under supervision, tracking notices. You learn deadlines, documents and how errors get noticed.
• Audit assistance. Vouching, verifying documents, drafting working papers. Often seasonal, with heavy periods around financial year end.
• Banking and insurance. Branch operations, customer service, documentation, sales support. Opportunities may be offered through branches or through training programmes; ask directly.
• Finance and analytics. MIS reports, dashboards, cost analysis, financial modelling at a basic level.
• Business operations. Procurement, inventory, vendor payments, and invoicing at a manufacturer or retailer.

Skills that make you hireable

Employers who take commerce interns rarely expect deep technical knowledge. They expect you to be accurate, careful with documents and able to use common tools. Learn these before you apply:

1. Excel. Lookup functions, pivot tables, filters, basic formulas and clean formatting. This matters more than any other single skill.
2. Accounting software. Free trials and student versions exist. Practise creating a company, entering vouchers and generating a trial balance.
3. Basic GST and income tax concepts. What an invoice must contain, what input credit means, what TDS is in outline.
4. Business writing. A short, polite email with no spelling errors.

Where to look

Chartered accountants’ offices. Practising chartered accountants take on commerce students in many cities. Visit or call, carry a one page CV, and ask who handles hiring. A walk in often works better than an online application at small firms.

Your college. Ask the placement cell and the commerce department. Teachers often know local firms who need help at specific times of the year.

Online portals. Internshala lists finance and accounts internships, and the AICTE internship portal lists opportunities mainly for students of affiliated institutions. Filter for your city or for remote work, and read each listing for tools and tasks.

Small and medium businesses. Traders, distributors and manufacturers often need help with invoicing and records and have no formal intake. A short email to the owner or accounts head can start a conversation.

Banks and financial institutions. Check careers pages and ask at branches. Do not pay anyone who promises a placement.

A CV that fits a commerce internship

List your stream and year, your software skills, and any relevant coursework. Add projects: a mock set of books, a class case on ratio analysis, a stock market project, or a college fest budget you managed. Describe the output: “Prepared monthly accounts for a college society with 12 transactions a week” is better than “managed accounts”.

If you are preparing for CA, CMA, CS or CFA, say so. Employers know that these students may want flexible hours, and being open about your schedule is better than disappearing in exam season.

If you plan to become a chartered accountant

The CA route has its own mandatory practical training, called articleship, which is separate from a casual college internship and follows rules set by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. A summer internship at a CA firm can help you decide whether the work suits you, but it does not replace articleship. Check the current rules on the institute’s official website.

Work you can do before anyone hires you

• Build a simple Excel sheet that tracks monthly expenses and share it as a sample.
• Take a listed company’s annual report and calculate five ratios. Write a one page note on what they show.
• Read a small GST guide and explain it in plain language to a friend. If you can write it clearly, you can show it.

Samples like these let you answer the question every recruiter thinks of: what can this student do? Attach them or mention them in your email.

Protect yourself

Be careful with offers that ask you to deposit money, to pass on your bank details beyond what a payroll needs, or to handle the company’s money through your personal account. A genuine employer will not need you to do any of that. Never share OTPs, and never log in to a client’s banking or tax portal on a personal phone unless your supervisor has explained the arrangement properly.

What to ask at the start

• Who is my supervisor and how often will we speak?
• What will I own by the end?
• Are the hours fixed, and what happens in busy periods?
• Will I receive a certificate or a letter?

Pay

Stipends for commerce interns vary widely, and many short internships at small firms are unpaid or pay a modest amount. We do not quote a figure because we could not verify a reliable one. Treat the learning and the reference as the real return.

For more ideas, see our guide on finance internships for commerce students. If you want writing practice on business and law topics that you can show employers, Lexfolio’s free virtual internship offers it.