IIM-B’s second year PGP Students, Harshal Agarwal, Kundan Thakan and Pratiksha Patil, have won the third edition of the Accenture B-School challenge. The finale was held in Gurugram, where teams from 10 B-Schools battled it out.
The competition is designed to give students an experience of solving real-time business problems with an underlying theme of ‘innovating in the new’.
Four rounds
The case had four rounds, starting with a rapid-fire online quiz. This was followed by a business simulation, where teams had to take over the role of a CEO and make decisions to achieve the business goals specified. This was followed by a case-round challenge where teams were asked to leverage digital innovation to suggest recommendations for businesses, leading to the grand finale in Gurgaon, where the top 10 teams worked overnight on solving business problems, incorporating the case theme across nine industries. They had 10 hours to plan, execute and present their solutions.
The judges comprised Sanjay Dawar, Managing Director and Lead for Capability Network, Accenture in India; Lakshmi C, Managing Director and Lead for Human Resources, Accenture in India; Christopher Arnold, Director Analytics, Wells Fargo India; Rajesh Rampal, Group CIO, Essel Group; Sanjay Singhal, COO, ITC Foods; Samyukth Sridharan, President and COO, Cleartrip.com; and Rajeev Batra, Group CIO, BCCL. The panel discussion before the final presentations gave the teams an insight into how different industries are actually incorporating ‘innovating in the new’ in their businesses.
Decision-making with limited data
Kundan, the winning team member, said, “The unique model of the case competition exposed us to how real-time business problems are addressed. There are times when CXOs have to take a quick business decision, sometimes even overnight with limited data at their disposal. In this case, there is limited information available on leveraging digital innovation across industries. What really worked well for the team from IIM Bangalore during the competition was working in coordination. We had our fair share of detailed and, sometimes, heated discussions around the solution. However, once we decided on a direction, we did our best in executing the solution.”
The team says their main takeaway from the competition was that industries are evolving at a fast pace owing to developments in digital innovations, which makes it a very exciting place to be in at this stage.