The stage is set for the finals of the BusinessLine on Campus (BLoC) Boardroom Challenge 2020 which will be webcast on December 26 from 10.30 am onwards.
The two-month long contest saw around 800 teams from top B-schools participate in the online preliminary psychometric test. In the second round, 33 teams were shortlisted to take part in the semi-finals rounds across nine cities.
After a series of well-researched and high-quality presentations during the semi-finals, held virtually across the country, nine teams made it to the finals. These regional winners — Great Lakes (Isha Agarwal, Nishant Thomas, and Chandni Magadum) (Chennai region); IIM Trichy (Soumya Anand, Shivam Kansal and Shweta Saitya) (Coimbatore); IIM Kozhikode (Shekhar Shrivastava and Pankhuri Sethiya) (Kochi); IIM Bangalore (Chandrasekar T, Chithra R and Vijay S) (Bengaluru); ISB Hyderabad (Chirag Jain, Bhargav Chikatimalla and Venkatesh Baliga) (Hyderabad); IIM Kashipur (Abhinav Kumar, Srishti Jovita Toppo and Hrishabh Satankar) (Delhi); SPJIMR (Priyanka Gautam, Shikhar Mohan Srivastava, and Vishal Sardana) (Mumbai); IIM Ranchi (Kiran Rajan, Surbhi Gupta and Mukul Sharma) (Kolkata); and Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune, (Rujuta Aronedkar, Aseem Raje and K Vijeth) (Pune), will be competing for the top honours. The top team receives ₹1 lakh in prize money; the first runners-up ₹75,000 and the second runners-up ₹50,000.
The BLoC Boardroom Challenge, a unique business strategy contest for B-schoolers, is in its fourth year. In 2017, the first year of the challenge, a team from LIBA, Chennai, was the winner, followed by ISB Hyderabad in 2018 and IIM Ranchi in 2019. In all the previous years the semi-final events were held at B-schools in various cities. The 2019 contest was held across 8 cities with participation from all the top B-schools.
This year, keeping in mind the safety of the students and others involved in this contest, the semi-finals were conducted entirely online, and the finals will be a virtual experience too. It has been a unique event with technology overcoming the challenge the pandemic has thrown up.
In the finals, the teams have to present their strategies on how to get more millennials and women to invest in mutual funds.
Knowledge partner S. Sivakumar, of Potential Genesis, and a people performance analyst and executive coach, prepared the online psychometric test that the B-schoolers had to take in the preliminary round. Vishwadeep Kuila of BrandVectors, the other knowledge partner for the event, and an IIMA alumnus, prepared the case study for the semi-final round, where students had to present their strategies to a jury, representing the company's Board, on how an FMCG brand can shore up its falling market share in emerging categories. The teams were assessed on their understanding and analysis of the case, the case solution, their presentations, and team work.
The jury for the various rounds of the semi-finals comprised, apart from Sivakumar and Kuila, KS Rao, Senior Vice-President & Head, Investor Education & Distribution Development, Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC Ltd; Sudhakar Rao, Branding Director, ICFAI group; Anuj Kapoor, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIMA; Prasanna Borah, Chief Information Officer, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB); Lokeshwarri SK and Radhika Merwin, Associate Editors, BusinessLine.
The BLoC Boardroom Challenge was presented by Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund and powered by Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB), in association with Punjab National Bank and Casagrand.
Viewers can register at http://bit.ly/BLOCBRC . Webinar ID: 8196367 4440