Home Competition Stories How team Marvels became the runners up of Nestle Agri Challenge -By Siddarth Pandey from MDI Gurgaon

How team Marvels became the runners up of Nestle Agri Challenge -By Siddarth Pandey from MDI Gurgaon

Siddarth Pandey - MDI Gurgaon

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How team Marvels became the runners up of Nestle Agri Challenge -By Siddarth Pandey from MDI Gurgaon

0 min read

Being a part of a challenge with so much exposure is all you want at a B-school. Dealing with real-life cases and issues and thinking out of the box helped us gain very useful insights during the competition, Nestle Agri Challenge.

It was a great feeling to be among the top 3 teams in India across all prestigious B-Schools. On top of that, the event was broadcasted on multiple channels which boosted our confidence, allowing us to showcase our ideas on the national stage. Even though we didn't win the competition, getting crowned as runners up of Nestle Agri Challenge and making it to the finish line of the competition was a memorable experience for us.

The beginning

My love for coffee started from living in Southern India for close to 5 years where I have been to places like Wayanad and Coorg that are huge coffee estates. This competition allowed us to explore farm problems faced by farmers which is also one of the most raging topics currently. In addition, one of my friends' uncle himself is a coffee farmer, so we had access to a lot of first-hand information. This made us want to take up the challenge and participate in the prestigious competition.

On-field preparations

We prepared thoroughly by talking to actual coffee farmers to understand the main challenges they were facing. This was possible through my friend's uncle who stays in Wayanad. We discussed the problems amongst ourselves for a few weeks, then brainstormed our ideas with them and the experts provided by Nestle and CNN.

Working together physically in a room is a lot better than discussing things over a call. We had to make up schedules and take out time for brainstorming sessions. The most challenging phase was assessing if our ideas made sense because we can come up with a lot of ideas but not all of them can be implemented. Hence, filtering out the main idea was the most challenging phase.

The Marvels v/s others

We had a diversified team in terms of our specializations, our background, etc. This allowed us to cover all aspects of the problem right from ideation to implementation, it’s marketing and financials. Thus, we were able to provide a complete end-to-end solution.

No major conflicts came in the picture but small arguments did happen based on the collision of too many thoughts. We kept things very objective and moved forward with the help of reviews from seniors. There were no ego clashes and if someone's idea was not taken ahead, we understood the importance of working in a team.

There were 12 teams selected for the nationals, I think our main competitor was the team Bingpots who eventually won the finals. They had a better grip on agriculture methods as they had pursued courses specific to agriculture and had previous experience of working in that field as well.

The competition was very well organized in terms of the structure, framework and judgement. Appropriate support was provided throughout the journey.

Learnings and takeaways

The most important thing, in the end, was that we learned how to empathize with customers who were farmers in this case. One needs to see things from others’ perspectives and then approach a problem. Also, the feeling of seeing ourselves on National TV will always remain etched in my memory. Overall, participating and winning the Nestle Agri Challenge was an overwhelming experience for us!

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Edited by

Siddarth Pandey - MDI Gurgaon

(Batch of 2019-2021)

Born in Delhi, he completed his engineering from VIT University, and has worked in Accenture previously. He was an integral part of team Marvels that participated in Nestle Agri Challenge.