Team Eternals IIM Kozhikode share their journey of becoming the National Finalists of Optum Stratethon
The challenges
The biggest challenge we faced was while diving into the US healthcare industry. To be honest, it's an ocean. They have a lot of unstructured data there. What to take, how to interpret, deriving insights from that data, were the main challenges that we faced.
7 teams made it to the Grand Finale. The team from SIBM Pune really left a mark. Their solution was different from us all and the methodology that they used was class apart. The way they presented was compelling too.
Why our team stood out
We did 2-3 brainstorming sessions to come up with an idea. We, then, kept tweaking the presentations till the last moment. Once we were ready with our solution, we asked as many questions as possible. This is how we ensured that we were giving a perfect solution which covered all dimensions of the problem. But still, Kudos to Srishti, she gave the final touches to our presentations which made them out stand the rest.
Each of us had something new to bring to the table. It wasn’t like we didn’t have conflicts. In times of conflict, we would sit together, brainstorm and arrive at a seemingly logical solution. The best quality of our team was the free flow of ideas. We never negated each other's ideas. Instead we listened, understood and tried to refine them further.
The intricacies of the competition
The jury was very encouraging all through the way. We got mentors before the grand finale to help us refine our solutions. The jury at the campus level too helped us get our solutions polished. The competition was well structured and we learnt a lot from it.
The first and foremost learning we garnered was the importance of teamwork. In our team, each and everyone of us worked on every aspect of the case. We never worked in silos. The solution was a combined effort.
At one stage, in the campus round, due to too much workload and stress, we were about to quit the competition. But we encouraged and motivated each other to give our best shot and we finally made it through, reaching the finals as National Finalists of Optum Stratethon. Overall, it was an amazing experience.