Let’s celebrate the winners of Asian Paints Chain Reaction and what they stand for! -By Team Erudite from SPJIMR Mumbai

All the aspects - right from campus round, problem statement and overall support from the organization were great. During the national finals of Asian Paints Chain Reaction, it was our privilege to present and interact with AP senior executives and departmental heads who gave us great feedback. Here is our detailed winning story!

The main reason for participating in Asian Paints Chain Reaction was its unique and challenging problem statement that we had to ideate and solve. Asian Paints has been at the forefront of the supply chain innovations and what could be a better opportunity to understand it in detail and solve an actual problem. 

Though our exam dates clashed with the preparatory phase of the competition, we decided that we would dedicate a significant portion of our time to solve the case and focus less on our exams. As the case submission window was small, we dedicated the days for our primary research and nights to structure and brainstorm ideas. The most challenging phase was to get actual ground-level insights from the customer and dealer interviews that we were doing and finally connecting the dots to arrive at the core idea of our solution. 

The joy of winning and learning

While we had put an immense amount of effort into preparing the solution, we thought our presentation didn’t go as well as expected. We thought we should not expect anything and just enjoy our time there. As the results were announced starting from the second runners up, we started placing bets on other teams to have fun. On hearing SPJIMR’s name on the winner’s title, we absolutely jumped in joy! It was one of those rare moments when all your late nights and early mornings pay off. We felt a rush of immense confidence and happiness.

Winning the Asian Paints Chain Reaction reinforced our belief in talking to the customers and stakeholders to get core insights and understanding the actual problems that they were facing. We also learned how having a great understanding between team members is crucial, the importance of prioritization and that there is no substitute for hard work!

Team Erudite - the secret potion behind the success

Samkit and Himanshu are friends from their undergrad days and Satyajit and Himanshu knew each other very well from their work-ex days. Hence, we had this strong bonding in the team where anyone could present and argue on the ideas without holding it back. Each one of us played the devil’s advocate from time to time to pressure test our solutions and solve any shortcomings. We believe that having a team where you can discuss and argue on any idea without the fear of judgement is crucial for great ideas and solutions which could help you win any case competition.

We had a well-balanced team as Himanshu and Satyajit were strong on the operations front while Samkit had worked in analytics. We realized that in order to solve the case, we needed strong insights from the operations on the ground which would act as a foundation on which the entire solution framework would be built. Each one of us fished out contacts of all the stakeholders that we could find – right from dealers and merchants to painters and interior designers and took in-depth interviews. These insights shaped our solution and helped us win the campus as well as the national round of Asian Paints Chain Reaction.

When the results were announced, one of us spontaneously quoted the dialogue "This moment.. this little moment in our life is called happiness". It gained a completely new meaning that day and the memory of that moment would always be cherished!