“Competition helps me progress”- Shubhendu Trivedi, D2C Competitive Leaders 2021

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Shubhendu swears by the quote, “No Competition, No Progress”. Being an MBA student of a premiere B-school, IIM Lucknow, is not an easy feat and the amount of hard work required “to reap the benefits of being a part” of it, is almost equal to getting through the entrances in the first place. But no matter how busy Shubhendu was, he made sure to focus on his holistic development and believes that participating in competitions outside classrooms is what helps one progress. Here is what he has to say on being ranked as one of the D2C Competitive Leaders 2021.

Feeling of Gratitude

My first reaction was a feeling of gratitude, for all the participants, team members & organizers who made me realise the potential of my suggestions, and gave constructive feedback around where I could improve.

Explore the World Beyond Books

I have always believed in an overall development, rather than focusing just on academics, or sports or work. MBA gives us the perfect opportunity for this, though we need to make efforts to reap the benefits of being part of a premiere B-School. In most colleges of India, a lot of emphasis is placed on placements and grades. What sets us apart from other students is how we utilize the time outside of the classes. Dare2Compete’s Case competitions were my go-to place for this. The validation of our solutions by top management professionals, when we won, gave us the confidence of facing the world & solving real life problems. No management book can give us that. Through these competitions, especially the corporate competitions, we get to solve something that has a real life massive-scale implication. We were thrilled to see our ideas being implemented by the companies whose competitions we participated in. We Dared to Compete, and We Conquered.

Barriers And Overcoming Them

It is commonly known that the Indian Educational institutions focus majorly on academia and grades rather than on holistic development of a person. And when a student is willing to go out of the way to participate and engage in more co-curricular activities, it results in added pressure and acts as a barrier. This is exactly what Shubhendu experienced but overcame with his determination. Here’s what he has to say about it.

Prioritizing competitions over placements and grades was definitely a barrier, which was breached through the reward of gaining practical exposure. The validation of our solutions by top management professionals gave us the confidence of facing the world, overcoming the barriers and solving real life problems. No management book can give us that.

Believing in each other's abilities

To succeed it's very important to have a diverse team who believes in each other's ability. The core team that I entered with in almost all the competitions had people from all domains ranging from finance to HR. This allowed us to have multi-dimensional solutions for any problem that we were trying to solve. 

Shubhendu made through a tough competition to secure his place in Top 100. He was introduced to the Dare2Compete’s Case competitions by a friend in IIM Lucknow, who became his team member for all future competitions. Out of the tens of competitions they participated in, two stood out: The Global Hackathon for COVID solutions where they were in the Global Top 10 Ideas and Amazon ACE where they were declared the National Winners.