How it feels to win KIRIT 2021 -By Arusarka Bose from IIT Kharagpur

The emotions at those exact moments are well beyond words! Our team hadn't even expected to be selected for the finals, let alone being declared as winners. As we had taken the decision to appear for the prelims in a haste with a plethora of tests and assignments bogging us down like iron chains, so when we heard our name being declared as the winners of KIRIT 2021, a sense of awe and satisfaction took over us. 

The primary reason to participate in KIRIT 2021 was the fact that after the lockdown began on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, my previous case team had kind of separated. This seemed a pretty good chance to try and find a new one. Also, as always, the prize money played a factor in attracting participation.

The mandatory Zoom calls

We started our preparation by thorough market studies and analysis of the underlying industry. We connected with known faces in the relevant market segment and processed their views in order to obtain a direction.

KIRIT 2021 was a relatively short case study since it was just a week-long and perhaps that is what made it more challenging for us with a full-fledged online semester to tackle in parallel. There were days on which we could manage only 3-4 hours of sleep due to the stringest academic deadlines conjugated with the casework.

I believe that zoom or google meet interactions can never replace the camaraderie of an in-person group discussion. In an online setting, even a group case study gets translated to individual efforts on separate fragments and it is easy to get distracted and lose sight of the goal. 

What makes the team a winner

I feel that the greatest factor which allowed us to stay productive was that I was already great friends with my teammates before teaming up for this challenge. This meant that the discussions were filled with personal banters and liveliness which served as constant rejuvenation.

Any group venture is bound to run into conflicts of opinion and a clash of judgement at some point or the other. In our case, the resolution wasn't a herculean job due to the air of humour we had managed to blend into our preparations. 

The greatest strength in our team would be the varied backgrounds each of the members belonged to. I was the tech and numbers guy who had a sufficient prior experience in working with data as part of business strategies, Kshitij was the research geek who loved going through articles after articles and imbibe all the information and then efficiently compile and inference on the same, whereas Gauranshi was a girl from a mechanical background who had the necessary expertise in the inner workings and principles of the prime mover products.

The seamlessly organized competition

There were 8 teams in the final. Since the teams were not allowed to view each other's presentations, we had no clue about any of the finalists and it was kind of this adventurous journey where you don't know what your competitors might be throwing at you.

Having attended as well as hosted several case study competitions, I feel I am in a position to say that KIRIT 2021 was conducted in an extremely smooth and efficient manner. What makes it further laudable is the fact that this was their first edition at this scale. The judging was meticulous and we were grilled at every fine detail of our strategy which ultimately worked to our advantage as we were able to defend our decisions and recommendations to the judges' satisfaction.

Learnings and takeaways

The competition was a very fulfilling experience and allowed us to learn a lot about the prime movers market and industry. I feel that the extensive research we had gone through leading up to the finale, would remain with us in future and would allow us to delve further into this industry segment for varied applications.

If I had to single out a moment from our journey, I would definitely pick the winning moment. It was elating and surreal. We had got on a call as soon as the official meet ended and were just laughing and smiling, all jolly, after a painstaking week of efforts and the ever burdening online curriculum.