Home Competition Stories An Interview With National Runners-Up Team Yolo From IIM Indore At L'Oréal Brandstorm 2022

An Interview With National Runners-Up Team Yolo From IIM Indore At L'Oréal Brandstorm 2022

Shreeya Thakur

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An Interview With National Runners-Up Team Yolo From IIM Indore At L'Oréal Brandstorm 2022

0 min read

“The competition brought our entrepreneurial zeal outside and gave us an opportunity to use in-class concepts for solving real world solutions.”- Team Yolo, National Runners-Up, L'Oréal Brandstorm 2022

With an aim to offer students an opportunity to innovate within the beauty industry, L'Oréal launched an international innovation case study competition-L'Oréal Brandstorm 2022. The competition provided participants a platform to enhance one’s entrepreneurial skills and tune them at par with the real world.

Wall Of Fame

Rank	Team Name	College
1	HellRaisers	Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai
1	Mariposa	Xavier School of Management (XLRI), Jamshedpur
1	The Neily Warriors	Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai
2	K-Stormers	Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Kozhikode
2	Muggles 2.0	National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai
2	Yolo	Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore

The competition was open to all first-year MBA students of India. The 3 winning teams won an Intrapreneurship program with an opportunity to work at L’Oréal head office in France as L’Oréal employees. The National Winners were also extended Pre-Placement Interview Offers for the L’Oréal India Management Trainee Position-Batch 2023.

We interviewed National Runners-Up team-Yolo from IIM Indore to know their experience at L'Oréal Brandstorm 2022. Here is an excerpt from our interaction with them.

Tell us something about your team.

Our team consisted of three members- Alistair who was involved with product growth and marketing, Mahak, the brainstormer of the team whose forte was designing and operational analysis, and Yogesh who was involved with financial calculations and problem analysis.

What was your strategy for the competition?

Our initial strategy was to incubate products that could address a known yet dormant issue in the beauty industry. Hence, after toiling for one and a half months, we got our first product- the AI Enabled Beauty Measure App. We then came up with another product that was an All-in-One Pen that could work as a quick touchup solution for the go-getters.

How was the experience of working in a team?

Quite frankly, the initial few days during the preparation were quite tough. We would have conflicts and disagreements. However, with time our team dynamics got better and soon turned into camaraderie. The conflicts then got resolved over food and tea.

The competition at L'Oréal Brandstorm 2022 was pretty tough. So which team did you consider as your biggest competitors and why?

All the teams that participated in the event had some amazing and out of the box ideas. However, there were a total of 9 teams that made it to the finals. In our opinion, Team Mariposa (XLRI, Jamshedpur) was a pretty strong team that addressed an important issue and brought a unique solution to the table. They actually ended up becoming their respective track winners. Apart from that, K-Stormers (IIM, Kozhikode) also seemed to be tough competitors. That was the only team which caught everyone's attention in less than 2 seconds.

Any comments on the judgment quality, organization and framing of the competition?

As far as we are concerned, the judgment and the feedback that we got was apt and aligned with what we thought as a team. The competition gave us a good platform for building a sustainable yet impactful product for the future.

Biggest takeaways?

The competition was indeed an enriching experience. Our major takeaways were- the importance of in-depth analysis for finding a solution; keeping the solution appropriate or apt for the audience and last but not the least, keeping the solution as simple as possible, always. Complexity always appeals less to people.