Bond with Pidilite National Winner Sumit Sethi’s Story

"And the National Winner is Team Triple Threat!” Wait! What? I looked over to my teammates and we all had the same feeling. The last major competition of our MBA tenure - Bond with Pidilite! Endless competitions, surveys, budgeting, presentations together and finally we had won as a team. I'll always remember the smiles, their beaming faces- the kind of smile you see on a child’s face when she gets something that she always wanted.

How many competitions let you choose the theme and the business domain in which you want to concentrate? Bond with Pidilite was the first iteration of the competition and it was indeed a unique one. First and foremost, this was a case writing competition which gave us complete liberty over the content and a chance to explore the other side of a case study. Many nights of ideation and a lot of previous experience of solving case studies went into creating an engaging case. It's important to understand that case writing involves much deeper research. Before you ask the questions, you need to know the answers that you expect. So, we had to be sure what exact questions we wanted the case to pose. The need for a new product took centre stage for us as we developed our case around it.

My team was a brilliant amalgamation of all the skills and aspects needed to win this interesting yet challenging case study competition. We worked and enjoyed and worked some more and this is how we spent most of our time together turning our solution into a unique and feasible one. I could find learning in almost everything we did which will stay with me till the end of time.

Finally, two teams from SIBM made it to the National Finals of competition Bond with Pidilite. It was a proud moment for us all that both were judged as Winners and Runners Up. A family that worked together, ate together, enjoyed together, and finally, won together. We were shining like stars living our dream which we didn’t expect to become a reality.

Competitions and case studies are the essences of learning how to implement your ideas. Still, a big reality is that you don't always win. It takes a lot of participation to win. But the most important aspect remains the team. I really thank Shahrukh Solanki, Supreet Kaur, Divyesh Chaudhari and Shail Nagarkar for being amazing teammates in various competitions. These guys have been crucial to my learning experience in all the competitions that I was a part of.