Here’s everything VGSoM IIT Kharagpur’s team did to become national finalists of the L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020

The L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020 is a one-of-a-kind competition open to B-school and engineering students across the country. It encourages teams to come up with practical solutions in the context of the growing environmental and social changes, giving it a contemporary characteristic. 

On 9th September, the top ten national finalists got together for the L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020 Grand Finale. Our team, Neutron Stars, which hailed from IIT Kharagpur was amongst the lucky few who had the honor of being recognized by the esteemed panel. Here is our story of all the efforts and hard work we put in over the past few months to secure the esteemed position. 

Fixing the root of the problem

Every team follows a particular strategy that decides their position at any competition. For the L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020, we focused on the very root of the problem and came up with solutions that provided longstanding results. Having an effective strategy acts as a guide for any team to come up with practical solutions. 

In fact, for the second round at the L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020, which was the idea submission round, we spent most of our time identifying the basis of the problem, which ultimately led us to the solution. We centered our primary research around the root problem and carried a complementary market survey to check the feasibility of the solution we devised. 

Once you have identified the problem, you are done with most of the work. What is left is creating an appropriate business solution, which can be tricky at times. During the national finale of L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020, we sat together for a week straight via online meetings to chart out the details of our solution and work out any minor problems that would arise while discussions. 

Keeping our cool

It can be an intimidating experience to participate in a big scale competition like L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020. The competition is tough, but our strategy as a team was to learn from the other finalists and work on what we felt were our weaknesses in the future. For instance, the team from IIT Madras shared very similar ideas to our team, but they added the technology element which made their solution relevant to today’s scenarios. 

At times, we were also bombarded with questions by the jury at the L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020. However, the key is to maintain your calm and answer every question as a collective team. Moreover, the competition is well organized and provides every team with helpful mentors, who are quite supportive in the face of challenges during the competition. 

Ensuring discipline and focus

The L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020, and every other B-School competition encourages teamwork. Hence, ensuring discipline and staying focused towards the ultimate goal is the simple key to success. It is important to maintain a sense of harmony amidst the conflicts you face as a team. In order to make sure our conflicts and differences never got the best of us, we calmly discussed the pros and cons of the different opinions, in order to determine the best solution. 

Not only should a team consist of people with different skills, but the teammates should also have the will to work hard. The zeal we had as a team to do better is one of the main reasons why we became the national finalists for the L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020. Other than that, communicate with your mentor during such B-School competitions. Their feedback and reviews are helpful in overcoming minor challenges and providing a fresh perspective. 

Overall, the L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020 has been a wonderful learning experience for MBA students like us. It has taught us to think out of the box and learn how big firms make important decisions. Most importantly, it encouraged us to work as a team, which is a life skill that will prove to be fruitful even in the future for us. Getting titled as the national finalists was the cherry on the top of this insightful journey.