Following the success of its campus engagement initiative — ‘Interrobang?!’ across top B-schools — ITC Ltd is mulling the possibility of taking the concept to premier engineering institutes such as IITs and NITs.
ITC, which had rolled out its ‘Interrobang?!’ initiative in 2011, currently hosts it in the top 19 B-schools, including the IIMs.
Interrobang literally means a cool non-standard punctuation mark ‘?!’ — intended to express both the interrogative (?) and the exclamatory (!).The event hosts talks by the company’s business leaders, alongside the coveted ‘ITC Interrobang Case Challenge’.
“We are seriously considering its introduction in engineering schools as well, but we have to tweak it to suit the student profile. Around this time, next year, we should be able to add at least two to three top engineering colleges including IITs and NITs,” Amitav Mukherji, Head of Corporate Human Resources, ITC, told BusinessLine .
ITC, which has been ramping up its manufacturing facilities, particularly in the FMCG business, would be able to tap into some ideas generated by engineering graduates on improving operational indices across its plants, and bringing innovation to the supply chain.
Tasting success
The FMCG major typically recruits around 80-100 students from premier campuses every year. Hiring through the Interrobang initiative accounts for around one-tenth of the total campus recruitment done by the company during a year and the interest has been growing.
As many as 40-50 students from the winning teams receive pre-placement interview (PPI) opportunity with the company, of this, around 9-10 of them bag actual offers.
This apart, the company has been able to adopt some of the ideas generated at Interrobang either directly or after minor modifications, he said talking about the success of the programme.
Some of the winning ideas have been successfully implemented to its brands such as Savlon. In case of the Dermafique skin care portfolio, some of the teams that presented at Interrobang also reinforced the brand team's idea to expand the portfolio to the suncare range.
Suggestions were also made with regards to leveraging B Natural brand’s association with farmers on packaging. Following this, the company has introduced new packaging for TetraPak with farmer stories printed on it. The company also launched 300 ml PET bottles for juice for the adventurous millennials.