Make way for future marketeers

WINNING MOMENT

When we heard that IIM Calcutta is a runner up, we thought we had lost the competition but were pleasantly surprised when our name was announced as the winners. Our  month long efforts have finally paid off,” says Pradnya Ashok Shaha as her teammates Vaibhav Oberoi, Sudheshna Sampathkumar and Saiyam Arora nod their heads in agreement.

These four students of PGDM (sales and marketing) at the Institute of Management Technology (IMT) Ghaziabad, are from the team that has recently won SABMiller India’s ‘Brew-a-Career’ Business Case Study Competition, 2014 at Bangalore.

Back in their hometown, the winners share with Metrolife, their journey to
the real boardroom, their experience and aspirations after having won the first prize of Rs one lakh and pre-placement internship for two months!

“At the campus-level, we were provided with clues for the case in hand and were asked to prepare a synopsis in five days,” says Sampathkumar informing how they competed against 90 teams before being selected for the finals. Once the first round was cleared, all four set about seeking advice of industry experts, seniors and faculty members to further refine their report.

The organising company wanted the students to brainstorm and come up with a proposal which could help the company in various ways. The IMT Ghaziabad team devised an “18-month long strategy” for this cause. Arora explains that they “explained what could be done in each month and quarter to meet the combined challenges and help the company make profits.”

“Whatever we had learnt as theory in our classrooms came in handy for this
practical experience in the real world. The best part was that all four of us were thinking about solutions and looking forward to work together, even though we hardly
knew each other before,” adds Oberoi.

So the competition also taught them about “team-spirit, because each one of us was making his or her contribution and had a valid point,” says Arora, recalling the synergy and spiritedness that he shared with his teammates.

Point it out to them that they don’t sound confident about their victory and Sampathkumar reasons, “Our objective was to encash this opportunity, since SAB Miller is our dream company. We discussed a lot with our seniors who told us that there are placement opportunities if we perform well. Though uncertainty was present throughout, but we didn’t let ourselves become under or over-confident. Also, our seniors told us that it is ultimately the quality of work that stands out and we were sure about what we had presented. This helped us sail through.”

Definitely it did, for beating teams from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM) Pune, Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) Delhi, Xavier School of Management (XLRI) Jamshedpur and others is not at all an easy task!