L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2023 Winners Of Planet Track From BITSoM Dig Out Their Winning Mantra

In 2023, L'Oréal returned with the seventh edition of its Sustainability Challenge. The all-Digital Challenge takes forward L'Oréal’s sustainability program to build a better business model. 

In the L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2023, the focus was on two pillars - people and planet. The idea was to invite “young and passionate change agents” i.e. undergraduate and postgraduate college students to devise strategies and solutions that address urgent social and environmental needs. 

The grueling challenge saw intense competition but our team GreenBuzz (Nanda Kishore, Darshil Shah and Gauravi Gaikwad) from BITSoM, Mumbai (BITS School of Management) emerged victorious in the Planet Track, bagging PPIs and L'Oréal goodies for ourselves. Here’s how we did that!

The Competition Structure

The competition was open to final and pre-final year full-time undergraduate and postgraduate students from any discipline in any college based out of India. Participation was only allowed in teams of three and cross-specialization, cross-college and cross-year teams were not eligible.

The competition started with a treasure hunt round and ended with a grand jury. The teams also received mentorship at two different stages - once before the Semi-Final and then before the Grand Final. 

Here’s a look at what the four key rounds looked like: 

As a team, we decided to go ahead with the ‘planet’ track as it closely resonated with our interests and the vision we had for our project. 

Three teams from each track–Planet and People–made it to the finals. We considered all the teams as tough competition and really enjoyed learning about the unique perspectives of each of the teams. The ideas given by the other five teams were brilliant and we were happy to be a part of such a competitive pool. 

Let us take you through the steps that spelled success for us. 

The Winning Strategy: Calculated Tradeoff

Our strategy was to keep it simple and go in-depth on the research part. We decided to not go wide on the number of things to do but instead drill down on one idea. We knew it was a tradeoff but it was a calculated one. We worked on the problem statement for over a month and spent 1-2 hours on normal days and 6-7 hours daily when the deadline was close. 

We decided to first collect insights related to the problem statement. To do so, we interviewed major stakeholders in the education space. One strategy we used was to work together to brainstorm ideas, and then proceed to work on our individual pieces. We then re-grouped to give feedback, criticize, and play the devil’s advocate for each other’s work. We only did this to make sure our work is robust. 

A challenge that we faced was the time commitments owing to our academic calendar as second-year MBA students. However, we were very clear that we had to put our best efforts to win this prestigious challenge.

What Set Apart The Competition: Mentorship

A unique aspect of the competition was the integration of mentorship with the judging process. Two rounds of mentorship were provided - one before the Semi Finale and another before the Grand Finale. The mentorship provided to us by the L’Oreal Team was invaluable as it helped us refine our ideas and put forth a better presentation. 

The judgment quality throughout the competition was exceptional. It combined constructive criticism with well-thought-through questions, challenging us to delve deeper into our ideas and articulate them more effectively. 

Overall, the competition was well-organized and thoughtfully framed. The combination of diverse rounds, integrated mentorship, and high-caliber judging provided a comprehensive platform for participants to learn, grow, and showcase their talents.

The 5 Key Learnings

There is a whole bunch of learnings that we got from the entire experience: 

• Talking about the challenge, we learned that primary insights are the key to problem-solving, especially when you don’t know the target segment that well. 
• We learned that apart from aiming to win the case competition, it is imperative to learn soft skills and technical skills while submitting the idea. 
• We learned some pretty cool PowerPoint and video editing skills. 
• We also learned the concept of working in teams under pressure with high stakes. We had our arguments and disagreements but resolved differences by giving each one a chance to speak and then calmly explaining our points of view. 
• We also learned presentation skills and understood how important it is to have a transcript. We had 3 minutes to give a pitch and we had 18 seconds to present each slide. Time management skill is something that we will never forget.

Moments & Members That Made The Journey Magical

In 'Greenbuzz', we synergized our expertise in technology, marketing, finance, and strategy. 

The team’s backbone was Gauravi, who contributed with her finance acumen, great articulation and creativity. Darshil was our marketing guru, adding critical insights and often playing the devil’s advocate. Nanda Kishore contributed with stakeholder journeys, technology and research. Together, our diverse skills meshed seamlessly, creating a dynamic team. 

Since we have known each other for the past 1.5 years of MBA, we had some idea about each other’s style of working. However, when we sat for long hours and discussed important topics for the case, we realized how each one worked. Each one has their style of working and it was crucial that we respect it. 

One good thing was that we all worked well while sitting together and while working alone in our hostel rooms. Conflicts arose almost every time we sat. However, we decided to take everyone’s point and if one person gets to decide on something, the other person decided on the next thing. 

Having three people on the team was advantageous as on some topics we did an easy vote casting and we went with what the majority said. One more style of conflict resolution was taking advice from our peers. On presentation aesthetics, we used to do A/B testing and that was very easy for us.

Our team’s forte was that we worked with a solution-oriented mindset, always aiming to come up with the best possible solution for the team – all three of us did not let our egos come in the way. We challenged each other's ideas with the intention to refine them and come up with the best possible idea and execution for the team.

Throughout the competition, we had several awesome moments – the most common theme between all of them was when after several hours of brainstorming or trial and error we would refine an idea or a slide to one which all 3 of us would agree on or when we realized we had found the best possible iteration of a particular problem.

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