Painting the Reliance TUP 6.0 canvas with our B-Plan -By Ishan Jaggi from TAPMI Manipal

We were exhilarated on learning that our team had been announced as one of the 11 national finalists. Being in the 1st year of our MBA, we did not know what our odds would be in Reliance TUP 6.0, a competition of this level. The sleepless nights spent ideating and nurturing our brainchild finally paid off. This would not have been possible without the constant support from our seniors and the faculty.

Reliance TUP is one of the top B-school competitions in the country where students from all the top B-schools come to share their B-plan. As we had an inclination towards entrepreneurship, this seemed like the best competition to pitch our B-plan to get some validation and work to better our pitch. We were determined to win a competition of this stature and had the goal of winning competitions even before we started our MBA journey.

Stepping into Reliance TUP 6.0

The most challenging phase was the ideation phase. We brainstormed for several nights and came up with many good ideas which we critiqued amongst ourselves. There were several arguments with each of us taking a stand for different ideas. We persevered and finally decided to go ahead with the idea which we presented after convincing each other why that was the best. Only after everyone on the team was on board with the idea, did we move ahead. 

Our passion for competitions and challenges helped us critically analyse our idea as we dug further to look at the finer details. The gamut of opportunities that unravelled with our idea only motivated us to work on it with more vigour. We don’t even remember how much time we spent working on the idea, because we were enjoying and learning and might have been carried away for a really long time. 

Teamwork makes the dream work

Our team consisted of four engineers from different backgrounds, which helped us in analysing different perspectives from a technical standpoint as well. It was challenging to work as a team that has never met. The temperament, working style and timing cannot be perceived perfectly in an online setup. What worked in our favour was the fact that we knew each other for a few months and had taken part in multiple competitions before this. That helped us synchronize with each other and harmonize our skill sets to work towards winning. Over time we knew each other's strengths to tap into potential opportunities.

In fact, 3 of the 4 team members met during the Reliance TUP 6.0 journey which was special in its own way. By the time we met, we had already been announced as the campus winners so there was a celebration as well.  

Conflicts are bound to happen when everyone is equally committed to the idea. Yes, we did have conflicts but as long as you respect each other and the work they do, you will find a way to resolve it. For our team, our commitment to winning was more important than the minor conflicts we had. So, the focus was always on the end goal and the minor bumps in the journey actually made it memorable, allowing us to analyse problems in a different light.

In our opinion, having a team that can work even outside their comfort zones was a highlight. Every member was in one way or another, perfectly capable of working independently. We had a good mixture of core competencies but also provided our viewpoints on another team member’s area of strength to produce integrated results. That is what made our team special.  

Learnings and Takeaways

There were 11 teams in the grand finale. There were a host of great ideas put across by students from various B-schools. Thus, we cannot zero in on any one competitor as all the ideas were very good.

The competition was organized seamlessly with the Reliance TUP 6.0 team from Reliance and D2C working hard to ensure that there were no technical glitches and we were well versed with the flow of the event, with dry runs conducted before every round of presentation. The judges were very experienced C-suite executives and having our business plan critically evaluated by them helped us look at our idea from another lens.

We had a wonderful learning experience, which is proudly the best we have had so far with this being the first corporate competition where we made it to the national round. We learnt to structure our ideas, pitch an entire business plan within 180 seconds, convince others to buy into our idea by addressing their doubts through our in-depth research in bringing out our idea in the best way possible. Integration of all our learnings and successfully putting everything across in a crisp manner was another key learning from this journey of holistic development.

Our special moment was getting an opportunity to be mentored by the CEO of Reliance Jio Messaging Services, who patiently provided us with a lot of insights on how we could improve our pitch and integrate our thought processes on the idea. We were also fascinated by his unique wall filled with paintings and caricatures.