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Mahindra War Room 2018 Chinmay Panday's Winning Story

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Mahindra War Room 2018 Chinmay Panday's Winning Story

My heart skipped a beat when our team's name was announced. I had always imagined this moment up until the Grand Finale and it was, like always, quite overjoying like a burst of joy you get after winning a lottery. But that was my imagination. In reality, the moment was very surreal in nature. My mind took me to the phases of work that had my team working on this project, the obstacles faced and how we did our best to overcome them. I realized that we have worked so wholeheartedly on this project that the satisfaction was already there and the winning title just gave it recognition.

After the declaration of results, the CEO of Mahindra Classic Legends Pvt Ltd. reached out and met us. He even appreciated the work that gave us the feeling of actually contributing towards a mission that we were on since the case launch. Mahindra War Room had been one of the most revered competitions for me for two reasons. Firstly, they give live business cases from real businesses and secondly the amount of time they give to prepare and present a comprehensive 20 minutes presentation for the campus round.

Thus, a detailed study is expected. An opportunity to understand the case completely is there and that is what made this one of my favorite competitions. Another reason was the Jawa Motorcycle Case study. Being a biker myself, the case was close to my heart and thus I made up my mind that day to work on this case and win.

I was already a part of the Target Group of the business, we were dealing with. Thus, the preparation started with an immersion my team took from me. Later the preparation started with talking to people around the biking culture and as per our a priori segmentation. We decided to critically analyze each of the immersion and find out the pain points in the existing scenario and hit the right spots in our strategy.

We worked right from the day of the case launch until the day of the National Finale. The most challenging phase was to travel to places to meet the right people to get that perfect insight. Managing that with the hectic schedule of B-School was something that needed to be pulled off.

We decided not to base our survey on the foundation of "Google Form" and live interviews and focused group discussions were decided to be MUST DO. Thus, traveling, video conferencing with clubs around the country, talking to over 300 people, collating the responses, understanding them is something that appears to be the most simple yet most challenging task. People say things all the time. But to understand what is not articulated is a huge task. It takes instincts and time and that was the biggest challenge.

Once that was figured out, the strategy expertise stepped in and we had a solid sharp problem-solving mechanism to solve through that strategy. Working with my team, I will say were the most productive hours of my life till now.

We had strict rules about work ethics and we religiously stood by them throughout the journey. Some of the rules were like: no one will work individually at home and then compile work and thus all work was done sitting together in concomitance with the entire team. This formed a synergy within the team and gave ideas a consistent flow that goes missing when individual work is compiled. I call this flow "The Soul" of the presentation which has to be there. The second rule was that no matter what, quality shall never be compromised. Regardless of how many hours or efforts a team member has put in, if the output doesn't seem up to the mark, we won't add that in our deck.

Heartaches did happen too because of the rejection of work. Conflicting ideas were there during the initial stages but later we understood it is for the project's sake that we need to put work before ourselves and thus critical evaluation of work took place seamlessly. It's simple. If you can convince your own team about a strategy that will work-out to be critically evaluated, you automatically start having strong backing in them, in turn, giving strength to the entire project.

Our team is a great mixture of people who are all different in terms of thought processes but the same in terms of the greater common goal. If I had to state individual member's talents, one member was a hardcore consulting guy who had a very structured and organized way of putting things across and dealing with problems independently. He helped in making us think of more than one way to deal with problems with areas to explore that we didn't think of. Another was a bourgeois bohemian, free-spirited rebel Gen Z guy. He is also someone who is great at analytics and data-based decision making. He evaluated the ideas coming from the gut in order to check the practicality of the same. Moreover, he helped us think beyond the people who already believe in retro-styled biking and made us think about new teenagers ie. new potential customers.

One guy, I will say, is a ruthless pragmatic who will just remove the flare and glare of the buzzwords and show you a worldview of a completely logical and reasoned mind. He helped us in not getting carried away with business terms and buzzwords. He compelled us to form a strong strategy that holds good in the real world. One of the members is called “The Clairvoyant” just for his ability to read and understand people and thus have super instincts. He is someone who is passionate about Marketing. He’s also keen on understanding the psychology and the "Why?" of people. He helped us in humanizing the entire idea and gave solutions that will take the brand where we want it to go.

There were 11 teams in the Grand Finale. I think every team was great in terms of their work. No particular team can be considered direct competition for us as all the case studies were different. As it turns out, the winning team presented just after us when we were outside the hall giving media bytes! So we actually missed out on their presentation!

It is indeed one of the most well-structured competitions we have attended so far. Quite evident from the quality of questioning that happened after the presentations, the judgment quality was exceptionally good.

Do you have your eyes set on winning Mahindra War Room Season 11? Read more about the organizers Mahindra.

Edited by

Chinmay Panday - JBIMS Mumbai

(Batch of 2017-19)

Chinmay Panday, a Civil Engineer with 2 years of work experience with a leading construction company. He decided to take a career shift towards Marketing and thus joined JBIMS for his Management Studies. He worked for Hindustan Unilever Limited for his Summer Internships and received a Pre-Placement Offer from the same.

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MBA Mahindra B-School Mahindra War Room 2018 JBIMS Mumbai Mahindra War Room