Journey of Apollo Munich Rise Up Challenge 2018-19 Winner Akshay Agarwal

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Words can't justify what we felt the moment they announced us as winners. Honestly, with such great ideas coming from competing teams, the Apollo Munich Rise Up Challenge 2018 felt intense and we went into it only to give it our best, but winning was something much more we got in the end.

I always had that competing spirit in myself, and have been participating in various corporate competitions right from year 1 of MBA. Apart from the intention of winning the competition, the key reasons I participated were to broaden my knowledge about the insurance industry, identify innovative but practical solutions, and contribute to providing solutions the company could use to grow even faster.

I can say with certainty that we left no stone unturned when it comes to preparation. We started preparing for Round 2 submission right from the moment the results for Round 1 were declared. Around 8 days with at least 11 hours every day were spent in researching and building our solution.

The most challenging phase was when we needed to scale our Round 2 submission for the Finale, where we needed to have enough quality content to present in the time slot allotted of 17 minutes, for which we had to really work hard in a very short span and time it accordingly.

My teammate and I have been participating in many competitions together, and this gradually helped us develop a good understanding. This really helped us, as we never faced any conflicts, since amicable solutions were always identified with strong justification for the stance taken, that was well conceived by the other person.

Mahesh is disciplined & great with presentation skills. He is committed to his work and ensures enough hard work is put in. I bring in innovation, efficient approach to deal with the problem, and proper planning at every stage to ensure things are executed as expected. The amalgamation of these skills leads to the creation of one formidable team.

Apart from us, there were 4 other teams from top B-Schools across the country. Upon discussing with the teams, we realized that they had solutions through which they deserved to reach the finale and many had a strong chance of winning it. We consider the Runner Up team of Komal & Kritika from IIM Kozhikode to be our strongest contender as they were full of confidence and had some really brilliant ideas. Adding to it is the fact that they had already won a few such competitions in the past that gave them an edge over us since this was our first.

The competition was developed and implemented in a splendid manner. We were honestly not expecting the importance of the event for AMHI, but they were very keen to hear our solutions as the entire Executive Management team (including the CEO) of the company took over 4 hours out of their busy schedule to patiently listen to us, and judge based on the parameters defined. The competition was very well organized and proper care was taken at every stage to ensure that the participants were comfortable and the process went very smooth.

We developed different ways to approach business problems from various perspectives never that were never thought of before and could never be taught in a classroom setting. These would certainly help us in our careers going forward.

We had been aggressively debating day and night, about the possible questions we could be asked in the Q&A round based on our solution. It was really a special moment when the practice paid off, as all the questions asked were something we had already discussed over in depth, and my heart was dancing within, while my mouth was blabbering the answers.

From the feedback we received post our Q&A round of Apollo Munich Rise Up Challenge 2018, from the management, we realized that they were convinced by it.

Do you have your eyes set on winning Apollo Munich Rise Up Challenge 2018-19? Read more about Apollo Munich Rise Up Challenge 2018-19 and the organizers Apollo Munich Health Insurance (AMHI) to cover all your basis.