SIBM Pune Championed The HR Track At Flipkart WiRED 6.0

The e-commerce giant Flipkart came back with the sixth edition of its B-School case study competition- Flipkart WiRED 6.0. The competition had four tracks- HR, Product, Business, and Supply Chain. It gave all participants an opportunity to win PPIs for internships and full-time jobs, along with amazing cash prizes. The competition was a magnanimous success with students all over the nation taking part; there were a total of 35,806 registrations and 51,40,123 impressions. The Team Symbi Champs from SIBM Pune won the national winner trophy for the HR Track. In this piece, the winners themselves are here to give us a snapshot of their journey. 

Flipkart WiRED 6.0 was one of the most awaited competitions and as soon as we heard of its launch this year, we geared up for participation. The competition was open to full-time MBA students from all B-Schools in India, and we had to participate in teams of three. So we- Ritvij Karande, Deepanshu Tyagi, and Vaishnavi Chandak, who had been studying together at SIBM Pune for the past year decided to form a team and call ourselves The Symbi Champs. With our registrations done, we eagerly waited for the rounds to begin. Let’s have a look at the competition structure, and then we’ll proceed to discuss other takeaways.

Competition Structure

The rounds were pretty straightforward and structured extremely well. Kudos to the organizing team of Flipkart WiRED 6.0 for their efforts in ensuring all the rounds were conducted efficiently and fairly. The said rounds were as follows:

• Round 1 (Qualifier): Online Quiz
• Round 2: Case Study Challenge
• Virtual Semi-Finale (Detailed PPT Submission)
• Round 3: Virtual Semi Finale
• Round 4: Down to the WiRED

There were 4 teams from the HR Track that made it to the Grand Finale. All the teams were from reputed B-schools and had prepared very well. When the presentation started and we went through everyone's presentation, we found that 2 teams gave us tough competition. The ideas and solutions that were presented by those teams were smart and realistic. But their ideas somewhat overlapped ours in a few aspects and we thought we might lose some brownie points. However, there were many additional points that made our presentation stand out. Overall, Flipkart WiRED 6.0 was a great learning experience for us, and our strategy and teamwork helped us pull off the national win. 

Strategy: Systematic Approach And Covering All Bases 

We followed a systematic approach to reaching a solution for the given case. Our strategy involved, beginning by understanding the problem statement and the deliverables. As a team, we decided to first broach the problem statement individually and then brainstormed about it together. After having a rough roadmap ready in our heads, we immediately started with the research work. This was a time-consuming process, as it involved talking to multiple stakeholders and making sense of each input. Post this we jumped to the analytics and recommendations part. We then came back together to finalize and ideate on our final recommendations.

The entire project and building the solution was a journey in itself. It involved days and nights of ideating-scrapping-ideating. The biggest challenge we faced during this journey was generating relevant information and input from key stakeholders. However, since Flipkart WiRED 6.0 was all about maximizing our ideas we also went all in for the recommendations and were pleasantly appreciated by the team as well.

Impeccable Panelists and Mentors

We had 3 esteemed panelists from the senior HR leadership team at the Grand Finale round of Flipkart WiRED 6.0. It was a proud moment for us to present our solution in front of such coveted leaders who are experts in their domain. The judgment quality of the panelist was sharp and to the point. During the semi-final round as well, we were questioned on many aspects of our presentation including the benchmarking, main idea proposal, and other recommendations. Based on the feedback received during the semi-final round, we reworked on few aspects and built our final presentation.

In the finale round, all 3 panelists heard us very carefully and during the Q&A they evaluated us on almost every aspect that we showcased in the presentation. We diligently tried to answer all questions despite the time limitation, and in the end, managed to convince them with our crisp and to-the-point answers.

The overall framing of the competition was very well done. Starting from the quiz round till the grand finale. All the finalist teams were provided with a mentor to help us in preparing for the final presentation. This helped us to get detailed insights on where we were going wrong. We could not have asked for a better opportunity to grow and learn at the same time.

Key Learnings From Flipkart WiRED 6.0

When Team Symbi Champs were announced as the winners of the HR Track, we felt like we were on cloud nine. We invested a lot of time and effort in this competition, right from the day we got the case study, till the day we presented our solution in the grand finale. In this 2 month's journey, we left no stone unturned to get the best solution for the case. Here are 3 core elements of our learnings that we gathered while working for the competition:

1. A team will always succeed if they are great at collaborative work, as it's extremely important. We experienced this at every stage of the competition. Each team member was a pillar of support for our team structure and it would not have been possible to win the competition without anyone of them. 
2. Time Management is very important, especially during the presentation round. There are always time limits to these rounds, and if you miss out on time, you will miss out on showcasing all your ideas to the panelist. So ALWAYS be conscious of time.
3. Always do 360-degree research about the problem statement. That is, don't restrict yourself to only the deliverables asked. We believe what made us stand out as compared to other competing teams were the additional aspects that we added for proving our solution to be more realistic and practical. And this was possible only because we conducted thorough and well-rounded research for our case. 

Things Will Go Wrong, But Keep On Striving

Something completely unexpected happened to us when we were heading to Flipkart's ETV campus in Bengaluru for the Grand Finale round. One of our team members missed his flight to Bengaluru and there were no other flights that day until 22:00 hrs at night. The event was supposed to happen the next day morning at 9:00 hrs so he had no other option than to reach Bengaluru maximum by late at night. The two other members of the team reached out as per plan and saw how other teams were doing live rehearsals and demos for D-day. Given that other teams well full-on rehearsing, we became even more anxious. So we decided to proceed with virtual rehearsals on google meet, but it was not convincing enough for us.

Our teammate finally arrived early morning at 3:00 am. With the presentations starting at 10:00 am in the morning, we were apprehensive that we might lose out on the time aspect or Q&A during the finale round since we did not have physical rehearsals.

In the end, it all boiled down to our confidence and team spirit. We took a moment and instilled the fact that we could win this competition as a team and that we were always there to support each other. As a result, we delivered our presentation within the time limits and answered all the questions during the Q&A round successfully, and became the National Winners. #TogetherWeMaximized

Looking back at it now, this experience turned out to be an indelible one, just like Flipkart WiRED 6.0 as a whole.

Embody The Team Spirit To Win

The foundation of winning any team competition is the quality of the team itself. We decided to have a diverse team with varying experiences. In fact, all of us come from different backgrounds and we made the most of this team diversity. 

We had Vaishnavi Chandak who joined SIBM Pune immediately after completing her engineering from PICT. Vaishnavi’s forte is the technical stuff, so she took up the feasibility and the financials. Then we had Deepanshu Tyagi who comes with a 5-year of work experience in the HR domain itself. Deepanshu is good at brainstorming and can convince an Eskimo to buy ice, that worked out great for us. And lastly, we had Ritvij Karande who had worked in a start-up for 14 months and is great at conducting research and content generation. All of us brought our distinct expertise and experiences to the table. 

Being friends for more than a year helped all of us a lot, as we knew each other’s personalities and how each person operated. We delegated the tasks based on our strengths and had no qualms in reaching out to the respective go-to person for any aspect, regarding any problem we were facing. Hence, there were no major conflicts, just long discussions about the solutions and the feasibility of the same. We would also meet up every couple of days to catch up and stay on track with our progress. The best part of our team was that no one member assumed the role of a leader, an overall synergy in the group was extremely beneficial that helped us to achieve the desired results. 

Flipkart WiRED 6.0 was a truly memorable experience for all of us, and we thank Flipkart and the organizers for conducting such a brilliant competition.

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