ICICI Beat The Curve 2022 National Winner Saga From IIM Nagpur

ICICI, the financial services group, came back this year with the fourth edition of its case study competition- Beat The Curve 2022. This initiative was the perfect opportunity for the future talent of the business world to showcase their skills and find unique solutions to the problems faced by the industry. With 5,622 registrations and 6,17,319 impressions, the competition was poised for success from the beginning. Multiple teams took this challenge on vying for amazing cash prizes and PPIs/PPOs opportunities, but there can only be one winner. And Team Phanton from IIM Nagpur lifted the ultimate trophy. Here’s looking at the winner experience.

ICICI Beat The Curve 2022 is one of the most popular case study competitions around. With a brand name association like ICICI Bank, it is no surprise that thousands of students joined the challenge. This was also true for us, that is, Ankit Gupta, Pradhumna Badal, Rohan Jaiswal, and Nishant Kumar. We are four guys from IIM Nagpur and we were eager to showcase our skills on such a huge platform. We decided to name ourselves Team Phantom and it was an amazing experience to tackle each of the rounds. We entered the competition to have fun and explore the industry. Getting the podium finish was definitely the best moment, which left us all feeling elated. 

Beat The Curve 2022: Competition Structure

The competition was really well organized and conducted, everything was well planned and execution was superb. To begin with, the competition was split into the following rounds:

The judgment panel consisted of business stalwarts from the ICICI Bank, and their judgment was extremely accurate. All of the members asked very relevant and interesting questions that pushed us to think quickly on our feet. The competition was conducted smoothly and in a very organized manner. All the teams were treated equally.

The Purpose Of Case Study Competitions

We have been a part of many other case study competitions, and have even reached the final stage. And if there was one thing we learned in these competitions, it was that you have to think boldly and come up with unique solutions to problems. Think about it this way, the case studies in the majority of competitions discuss an issue that the company is currently facing, so it is likely that they have worked on the issue for months and have looked into all of its potential solutions.

And in coming to test the top talent through such ventures, the organization is looking for something unique and daring that will make the jury wonder why they haven't thought of the same solution. And if you manage to accomplish this feat, nothing can stop you from winning the competition and getting noticed by the best in the industry. This line of thought led us to build a strategy that laid the foundation of our winning journey. 

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The Winning Strategy

As mentioned before, our aim was to bring something bold and new to the table, and everything we did was directed toward this end goal. Our strategy was simply to come up with something new and different backed by strong research and follow a comprehensive approach to finding solutions. 

• So we began with the problem statement and explored every part of it to get a deep understanding of the issue at hand. 
• We were cautious to not come up with a solution without understanding the actual problem and customer pain points. So the next step was to conduct primary and secondary research.
• Then came the ideation stage, where we brainstormed based on secondary research and benchmarking with the competitors.

We worked for approximately 6-10 hours per person for the first submission of the campus round, then around 2-3 hours per person for the national round, and around 6-8 hours per person for the physical national round as a mentor was also assigned to us to make our presentation more full proof. It took a lot of hard work and dedication to get the results we wanted, but that is what made the journey memorable. 

Challenges & Resolution

There were multiple challenges we faced during the competition, both as a team and within the team itself. And when faced with challenges or conflicts, one must remember that conflicts aren’t always bad. In fact, they contribute to making your solutions more holistic. Some of the major challenges we faced were:

• We often ran into dilemmas, wherein we had to choose one path out of the two. Such a situation can leave many confused and prolong the path to the right solution. But we often took the bold step, which helped us stand out of the crowd.
• There were conflicts regarding ideas and what to do and what not to do. This is the most common problem teams face. But being able to reach a common ground after the conflicts is one of the most satisfying parts of the journey. 
• A lot of the time, a challenge might be a blessing in disguise. We experienced this during the mentorship round. Many of the questions posed by our mentor after we had explained our solution, seemed like big challenges. But in the end, these questions were what helped us give our best during the Q&A in the grand finale. 

All in all, it is important to remember that conflicts are a part of every team challenge, especially when you are working to create new solutions. But you need to sit together with your teammates and talk it out, for this is the only way to come to a solution. Also, we learned that the process of conflict resolution always brings out the best solution. You can test it out for yourselves.

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Criticize Your Own Solution

When the objective is to come up with a complete, unique, and viable solution, you can’t be happy with what you come up in the first try. You need to criticize your own solution, at every step of the journey. We constantly challenged our solution in an effort to make it better and to be ready for any potential questions and answers from the jury. In our team, there was always at least one member who came up with a question that went against the very fundamentals of our idea. Now you may think of it as a bad thing, but believe us it's not. 

Whenever this happened, we used to either try to make the issue right, if possible. And if not, then we came up with good backing for the existence of that loophole. This process not only helped us prepare the winning solution but also helped us in the Q&A part of the final presentation. 

The Grand Finale Judgment

The competition was judged by three separate jury panels for different tracks namely- MSME, ESG, and Analytics; for the grand finale. The judgment was based on the idea/ solution itself and how clear the team was with presenting this solution. 

The panel consisted of esteemed professionals from ICICI management upto the CXO level, who had years of experience and were experts in their domains. So it was not surprising that the quality of judgment was beyond great. The competition was very well organized and ICICI took very good care of the teams by managing our stays, travel, and food themselves. It was great to be a part of this experience!

Key Lessons From Beat The Curve 2022

There were numerous things we learned from this competition. But here are a few that we would like to share with you:

1. Believe in yourself and never shy away to take a bold step. Because the greater the risk, the greater the payback.
2. Brainstorming for hours with the team is one of the best methods to learn and grow.
3. While you should be open to criticism and take it constructively, you should always believe in your idea and be firm in it.

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The Importance Of Team Diversity

They say- ‘You are as good or bad as your team’, and we agree with this thought completely. There are no individual performers in a team competition, and every member must bring something new to the table. And our team's forte was diversity in terms of interests and talents. We all come from different professional and educational backgrounds and therefore are able to look at any problem from different perspectives. We have one member who is strong in finance, one who is strong in product management, one who is strong in strategy, and one who is strong in operations.

We segregated our roles and areas of responsibility from the get-go, as per our expertise. And we all played our roles very well, which made our solution comprehensive. Another thing that helped us perform to the best of our abilities was the fact that we are good friends first, then a team. So everyone was very open with their ideas and there was always room for discussion rather than turning it into a conflict.

We all were passionately invested in the competition and used to think about the problem and solution from all possible angles. So even though each of us had some or other expertise, we won because it all came together in the end in a very cohesive manner. 

Conclusion

What led us to the victory was a simple fact, our team came up with something different from what the company was doing. And we believe this made jury members think of our perspective and how unique it was. Our solution was comprehensive with all aspects of its GTM strategy, financials, and future scope also well thought out. Each member of our team was well prepared and had researched their parts and left no stone unturned in making sure the work they were doing was foolproof.

The most special moment was when we were swaying between "it's not us" and "we were really good, we deserve it". And just then the host called "The winner is Team Phantom from IIM Nagpur". We will forever cherish the amazing feeling we got when we heard the winner's announcement.

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