Sublime Story Of HUL L.I.M.E. Season 14 Runner-up From SPJIMR

HUL L.I.M.E. Season XIV is an inter B-School marketing and business challenge that gives students an opportunity to stretch their imagination and write the future. With the launch of the competition’s 14th edition this year the three of us, i.e. Sarthak Sharma, Harsh Singh, and Khushi Bahl, were eager to get a peek into the HUL world. We are all management students from SPJIMR and we decided to call ourselves Team Sublime. Winning the national runner-up title for such a huge and prestigious competition was one of the best feelings we’ve had. In this article, we will take you through our journey, and share deep insight and takeaways. Read on!

About HUL L.I.M.E. Season XIV 

L.I.M.E. XIV was a beautifully crafted competition, the case revolved around gamification and each round pushed us to probe deeper into the problem statement. The semifinals were held in the Mumbai HO with senior leadership from HUL judging the competition. The finals had a host of judges from directors at HUL to CEOs of gaming companies which was aired on CNBC. The flow of the competition was:

• Round 1- Virtual Launch Event and Case Study Reveal
• Round 2- Opening Round (Case Submission)
• Round 3- Semi-Finals at Head Office of Hindustan Unilever Mumbai
• Round 4- Grand Finale at St. Regis Mumbai

There were a total of 6 teams in the finals of L.I.M.E., three teams from ISB, one from IIM A, one from IIM B, and then us from SPJIMR. All the teams were tough competitors as these students came from the top colleges in India and were the best among 20,000+ students. The teams had very unique solutions to the problem statements and hence at the end of the day, it was a battle of wits and presentation.

Our Strategy For HUL L.I.M.E.

The strategy we followed to crack the competition was simple - 

1. We laid a lot of emphasis on research and ideation to ensure that we were able to capture the essence of the brand and portray it in the best possible manner in the game. 
2. This ensured that we hit fewer roadblocks while executing our idea and communicating it in the presentation and video. 
3. After understanding the brief and conducting primary and secondary research on the brands given to us, we selected Dove. We spent a few days simply brainstorming possible gaming integration ideas around the brand. 
4. Selecting the right game was a rather challenging task, because of the number of criteria we wanted the game to meet. Not only did we require the game’s user base to intersect with the target audience of Dove, but we also wanted to create an intuitive integration that created minimal disruption in the gaming experience. 
5. We also wanted our chosen game to have a shared vision with Dove to integrate the ideals of the Dove Self-Esteem Project seamlessly into the game and hit the brief provided to us.

The entire process from researching and conceptualizing our integration solution to preparing the presentation took approximately a week’s time. And it was a great week!

Lessons Well Learnt

• The biggest learning that we have gained from this experience is that nothing is impossible until you start doing it. 
• The odds of qualifying for the semi-finals of HUL L.I.M.E. are so low let alone winning it but from day 1 we had a lot of faith in our idea. The bottom line is to have faith in yourselves and your ideas. 
• The entire experience also helped us in getting cross-discipline knowledge about gaming, FMCG, finance, and consumer behavior to name a few. 
• It taught us that we could spend sleepless nights and still attend classes and give exams as we were fuelled by sheer grit and passion for our idea.

Also read: Challenge Yourself With These B-school Competitions

Be The Devil’s Advocate

It was a fantastic experience working with the team but there was never a dearth of conflicts or shall we say disagreements.

• We were very clear from Day 1 that we would be each other's devil's advocate. 
• Any idea that we came up with was scrutinized by each of the team members and we always took feedback from various other sources too. 
• In case of any conflict, we tried to remain as objective as possible and not marry the first idea that came to our mind. We carried on thorough discussions and moved forward only when all three of us were convinced.

One amazing thing about our team was that we pushed each other out of our comfort zone. There were countless 3 am night calls, multiple surveys, and conversations with gaming companies. And it would not have been possible without the push that we gave to each other.

What Made Our Team Efficient?

Our team's forte was the ability to ideate and have flexibility with regard to the feedback received from various sources and from mentors throughout the competition. The team as a whole never got fixated on one particular line of thought but was able to amalgamate the streams of ideas into a coherent working prototype. The target group and the feasibility of the idea remained our guiding beacon right from day 1 to the national finals.

Our team had people from varied backgrounds and this diversity helped us throughout the competition. Being a team with freshers added a distinct and bold outlook to our idea. Harsh Singh was the numbers guy and his objective thought process kept us grounded. Khushi Bahl with her sharp financial intellect and her creative mind helped us with the budgets and estimates. She was also the sole reason for our decks always being up to the mark. Sarthak Sharma never fell short of ideas and the team capitalized on his understanding of marketing. He made sure that we not only had a unique idea but also that it was very intuitive and simple which was a tough task to crack. HUL L.I.M.E. Season 14 was a brilliant experience that helped us learn a lot and will help us in our future endeavors.

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