Mahindra War Room 2017

Mahindra & Mahindra has its beginning in pre-independent India in the year 1945. K.C Mahindra and J.C. Mahindra collaborated with Malik Ghulam Mohammed and established this company in Ludhiana. Post partition the company wholly came under the care of the Mahindra brothers and since then it has reached the zenith of success with its spread across various sectors of business. With continuous innovation, Mahindra & Mahindra was ranked 21st on a list of top companies in India by Fortune India 500 in 2011.

To keep up with innovation Mahindra & Mahindra has started with a student engagement initiative called “Mahindra War Room”. The 10th edition of the Mahindra War Room was held in 2017 and launched on 1st Oct’17 across 21 campuses for the full-time students pursuing two-year flagship PGP/MBA program.

According to the rules of the competition, the students were required to form teams with a maximum of 4 members within the campus. The contest was open to both 1st and 2nd-year students who were given business caselets to be solved. View the complete details of the competition here.

Students got a window period of 7-8 weeks post launching of the Mahindra War Room(MWR) 2017 to work on their solutions for the Campus Evaluation Round. The entries were studied by a panel comprising of senior Business leaders from the Mahindra Group. The shortlisted teams ( also called Blue Tier teams) got an opportunity to be a part of the Campus Finals. The Campus Finalists were required to show a 20-minute presentation and engage in a Questions & Answers session of 10 minutes. The jury then evaluated the entries based on these criteria:

Strategic depth of issues analyzed
Innovation
Implementability
Quality of analysis (Numerical and Research-based analysis etc.)
The depth of issues covered
Quality of presentation

The top 3 teams per campus were selected based on ratings given by the jury and the audience for the next round, called Silver Tier. The Best Presenter award was bestowed in this round based on the audience voting.

All the Silver Tier Teams from various campuses then participated in the VC round where they were classified based on the business case and presented their solution to the CEO / CXO of the respective businesses. The Top 8 presenters joined the Platinum Tier to get direct entry to the Grand Finale.

The top two teams were picked by the jury from the next-in-line 12 Gold Tier teams who got a chance to present themselves in the Grand Finale along with 1 Team Shortlisted from Gold Tier (International Team). These 11 teams then competed against each other in the final round.

The finalist teams received a 3- week window to improve and strengthen their presentation for the Grand Finale. On 6th of Nov’17, all the teams got an opportunity to present their strategies to the jury comprising of Mr Anand Mahindra, the Group Executive Board (GEB), and a distinguished guest list of eminent Mahindra managers in Mumbai.

After meticulous evaluation, team ChaarPaai from IMT Ghaziabad was declared as the winner of the Mahindra War Room 2017, followed by a team from IIM Lucknow as the first runner-up. View the list of campus winners here.

The winning team received a sum of INR 5 lakh along with a Club Mahindra Holiday Experience, PPI from Mahindra & Mahindra and an all-expense paid trip to Formula E International Race. The runner-up team was awarded a sum of 2.5 lakh rupees along with a Pre-placement interview and a Club Mahindra Holiday tour.

This type of competition brings in a sense of enrichment both for the jury and the participating candidates. It prepares students to assimilate their theoretical learning to apply and execute in a real way thus paves their way for a brighter future.

Mahindra War Room 2017 ranked 4th in the Most Prestigious B-School Competitions of the Year 2018 as part of Dare2Compete Awards based on 3600+ student responses from across all B-Schools.

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