Airtel iCreate 2017

Airtel is one of the largest mobile service providers in India. It has been a relatively quick journey for Airtel from being a provider of electronic push button phones to a multinational company with its presence in 20 countries around the world. To keep up with its robust growth a continuous input of fresh innovative ideas is always a prerogative. Thus iCreate became one of the potent tools in Airtel’s armoury to get the best talents onboard.

Airtel iCreate was first commissioned in the year 2009 and it has entered its 9th year in 2017. iCreate 2017 took place in three different stages, namely Campus Round, Semifinal Round and the Grand Finale. The competition was open for both 1st and 2nd-year students of IIM- Ahmedabad, IIM- Bangalore, IIM- Calcutta, IIM- Indore, IIM- Kozhikode, IIM- Lucknow, IIFT, XLRI, FMS, MDI Gurgaon, TISS, ISB, SPJIMR, NITIE. Aspirants were allowed to register in the team of two members.

The registered teams were given cases pertaining to General Management, Finance, HR & Supply Chain domain to work upon and upload them on www.airtel.in/icreate. The entries were studied and then shortlisted by a panel consisting of Airtel's top leaders and the senior Young Leaders. Top 8 teams were selected to represent in the Campus selection round.

The Campus selection was held in all the 14 campuses and the selected teams got an opportunity to show a 15-minute presentation to substantiate the case solution with appropriate implementation to the Jury followed by a Q&A session. The entries were evaluated on the following criteria:

Business & Situation Analysis
The novelty of Ideas/ Out-of-the-box thinking
Ease of Implementation
Supporting Analytics
Financial Viability/ROI
Quality of Presentation

Thereafter top two teams were declared as winners from each campus. These two teams are merged together to represent as one team in the semifinal round. View the details of the competition here.

These round also permits the entry of wild card teams from non-listed campuses. The teams with 4 members were asked to submit their entries to be evaluated by the Jury. Upon evaluation, two successful teams were selected to fight with other teams in the semifinals.

16 teams ( 14 campus teams and 2 wildcard teams) participated in the semifinal round where teams compete against each other in the batch of four. Teams play 4 online business simulation games and take decisions on profitability and competition over six quarters. The top 4 teams win the ticket to the Grand Finale round.

Each team is assigned a mentor to guide them while solving a Live Business Challenge in the Grand Finale Round. Teams are then invited to present their recommendations to the top leadership team of Airtel at Gurgaon, Haryana.

The team from SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai was declared as the winner and the team from Department of Management Studies (DMS), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi became the first runner-up. View the list of finalists here.

The winning team was awarded a sum of INR 4,00,000 and INR 2,00,000 was given to the runner-up team. Each finalists teams received a sum of INR 40,000. Pre-placement Summer Internship was bestowed on 1st-year students and the 2nd-year students received a PPI from Airtel for winning the campus round.

This long drawn competition prepares students to face the real-life challenges in the years to come. It also helps in synthesising many ideas and ensures a learning experience for all.

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