Amazon ACE Challenge 2018

ACE Challenge 2018 by e-commerce giant Amazon was a battle on 3 fronts- Innovation, Strategy, Simplicity. When an adept mixes the aesthetics of simplicity, the power of strategy and uniqueness of innovation it transforms into a game changer.

Amazon tried to seek such adepts by organising ACE Challenge 2018. It was open to first and second year full-time students of the flagship PGP and PGPX program from a list of top Business Schools in India and APAC regions.

The registrations for ACE Challenge 2018 commenced on 6th July. Management Students from the first and second year were asked to form a team with a minimum of 2 and maximum of 3 members.

Rounds

Since Amazon is into a consumer-centric business which manages a mammoth network of sellers and buyers, the competition tried to highlight this issue by introducing Operations and Consumer Business as two main themes. Teams had an option to either participate in one of the domains or both.

ACE Challenge 2018 spanned over two different rounds-

• The ACE Case Breakers
• Innovation Challenge

The preliminary round which also acted as a screening round was held online on ACE website on 13th July 2018. Post registration the teams were able to download the Cases related to both the themes. Participating teams had 72 hours to ponder and write a best case solution along with other supporting documents and submit.

Top 5 finalists under each domain were handed over the final Case Study a week before the Innovation Challenge. Each team were assigned a mentor to get an in-depth knowledge of the issue and understand the way Amazon works to accentuate their inputs into the Case study. View completed information of ACE Challenge 2018.

Finalists

Consumer Business

• WIMWIANS-Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM A)
• The Knights-Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode (IIM K)
• Swift-Indian School of Business (ISB)
• The Sharks-Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi (FMS)
• Team Strategos-Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT)

Operations

• Hashtag-Indian Institute of Management, Shillong (IIM S)
• Thilakan-Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi (IIM RCI)
• Team Brisk-National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE)
• FluidTrons-Indian Institute of Management, Raipur (IIM RPR)
• The ACE Team-Indian School of Business (ISB)

The shortlisted teams were invited to the Amazon Headquarter at Bengaluru to present their innovative case study solution before a panel of Business Leaders from Amazon India.

Winners

After making their way through the various judging thresholds Team WIMWIANS from IIM Ahmedabad comprising of Raman Sharma, Dharmesh Shah and Saurabh Mhatre was declared as a winner under Consumer Business section and The Sharks from FMS Delhi became runner-up. Team Thilakan comprising of  Ajith Krishnan, Vivek CC and Sanjana Joeboy from Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi became topper in the Operations and Team Hashtag from IIM Shillong was declared as the runner-up.

Awards

The Winners under each business case received ₹ 1,50,000 and the Runners-Up under each business case was bestowed with ₹ 45,000. All top 10 participating teams in the finale were offered PPIs and Kindle from Amazon. The participants also got an opportunity to Network with Leaders of Amazon. Special recognition for top 30 teams and top 10 teams will get a chance to appear on National Television.

Read more:

• Complete information on ACE Challenge 2018
• All videos and articles on Amazon
• Recruiter Diaries of Topmost Corporate Houses