ISB Mohali Wins BLoC Campus Boardroom Challenge

BLoC Boardroom Challenge is a one-of-a-kind competition for MBA students and B-schoolers to work together as a team to solve a boardroom-level business problem. Starting with a preliminary round it goes on to seven-city semi-finals and a grand finale.

A team from ISB, Mohali campus has won the Grand Finale of the BL on Campus Boardroom Challenge 2018 with IIT-DoMS and ISB, Hyderabad as the first and the second runners-up.

Presented by Indian Terrain Fashions in Chennai on September 5, the finals had seven teams make their pitch on how the apparel brand could expand sales of its boyswear brand, Indian Terrain Boy and make it a market leader.

The finalists were TAPMI Manipal, ISB Mohali campus, GRG School of Management, Coimbatore, IIM Indore, IMT Ghaziabad, ISB Hyderabad campus and the Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras.

The 5-member ISB Mohali team comprised Jinal Shah, Sounak Kundu, Sukrant Tulsi, Namrata Rao and Anshula Bansal. According to the jury, their presentation had insights into the Indian customer always seeking value for money and versatility of children’s wear. The team had also come up with convincing investment projections and the rationale for the choice of distribution channels.

The winners and the first and second runners-up received ₹1 lakh, ₹75,000 and ₹50,000 respectively from BusinessLine, and gift vouchers from Indian Terrain.

The jury comprised Krithika Subrahmanian, MD and Chief Architect at architectural design firm Transform Design, Vishwadeep Kuila, Founder and CEO, marketing consultancy company Brand Vectors and Charath Narasimhan, CEO, Indian Terrain.

The DoMS-IIT Madras team, the First Runners-Up, comprised Vedant Diwan, Soumay Bansal and Chetan Agarwal. The team had emphasized expanding the boys’ range to include accessories and seasonal wear, besides a sound financial plan and a suggested change in the brand name.

The team from ISB Hyderabad campus comprised Rachit Jha, Yash Bagani, Atul Agrawal and Vivek Chirania. They got the Second Runners-Up by impressing the jury with an emphasis on products and accessories, online marketing focus and strategy of investing largely in multi-brand outlets, especially for the long term.

The winners and the first and second runners-up received ₹1 lakh, ₹75,000 and ₹50,000 respectively from BusinessLine, and gift vouchers from Indian Terrain.

Earlier, introducing the case, Charath pointed out that however good an idea, it was “important to back it up with the rigour of analysis and sound number-crunching, as well as the ability to take decisions on scaling up a business.”

In this second edition of the Challenge, the company and the jury were seeking bold and different, but workable, ideas on product positioning, the best way to use the promotions budget, the distribution channel to focus on and the investment required to achieve the brand’s rapid growth.

Business Line, in a report, said while all the teams presented strategies on the questions posed in the case set for them, each had a specific focus that reflected a new way of thinking, whether on brand positioning, product attributes or the optimal way to allocate investments.

Meanwhile, jury member Krithika Subrahmanian stressed the importance of presentation. Even if a CXO team has all the facts and numbers right, presentation to a Board is an art in itself, and requires an element of ‘romance’, in the way the story is told, and a flair to make the right impact and achieve the desired result, she explained.

Venky Rajgopal, Chairman, Indian Terrain Fashions Ltd., said the presentations were specific and accurate, marked by interesting ideas, well-distilled facts and numbers. “This is a reflection of the competitive world the youngsters of today live in, where they have to up their game every single day… This means the intensity of competition in the boardrooms is that much more,” he added.