The winning team

The runners-up from IISWBM

Eastern India’s regional finals of 6th National Competition For Management Students (NCMS) was held at the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management (IISWBM) on September 5, with the St Xavier’s College team taking the trophy. 

34 teams, comprising 2 students per team, from eastern India took part this year from B-schools like International School of Management, IISWBM, Bhavan’s Institute of Management Science, Army Institute of Management, North Eastern Regional Institute of Management, Eastern Institute of Management and St Xavier’s College among others.  

The winners of the competition were third semester BBA students from St Xavier’s College- Surbhi Agarwal and Anku Goyal- beating all other MBA students. “We had a story weaved in our presentation as jury members just now said it should be. We took up case studies of Lifeboy and Future group. Our presentation was more lively than others as we started off by talking with each other and unlike other teams, instead of using facts in our presentation, we talked more about innovative ways to improve India Inc,” said Surbhi.

“We just prepared it in the eleventh hour, and didn’t expect to win. We were not prepared for this one and am sure even at Delhi it will be a last minute presentation,” said Surbhi on what they plan for the national level of competition to be held at New Delhi on September 12. 

The theme for the competition was ‘Innovate, Restructure and Reorganise: Challenges for India Inc’ on which teams gave a 10 minute presentation followed by a grilling question-answer round from jury members. 

“The purpose of this competition is to be build competitiveness of Indian management students. There are so many students from diverse backgrounds in India, but the study of AICTE and AIMA says that only 23 per cent of management students are employable, while remaining are not at par to be globally competitive. The aim of this unique competition of b-schools is thus to create competition among management students to perform better,” said Kamal Singh, director, Centre for Management Development, AIMA. 

This competition was launched 6 years ago with eighteen teams and has progressed to 200 teams all over India, with inclusion of teams from top B-schools for first time this year, including likes of Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship (Bangalore), International Management Institute (Delhi) and IIM, Ahmedabad. 

“This is an opportunity of natural learning, cross fertilisation of ideas, interaction and networking for students,” said Singh. 

Participants had a lot to take back. While some students said it was a learning experience in terms of how to make presentations and conduct it on stage, others got new ideas to think on. “From other participants we got a massive view of the topic. We had come with preparation on fixed thoughts on the topic, but here we got 34 new ideas,” said participating student Sabyasachi Mukherjee, IISWBM. 

 “Have confidence. Risk taking is one of the things which no B-school teaches. Practicality says, know less of your text book and more of behaviour of those around you to progress,” advised Mrinmoy Roy, former executive director, SAIL, as jury member to students. 

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