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SPJIMR Mumbai's P V K Srikanth shares his journey through corporate competitions!

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SPJIMR Mumbai's P V K Srikanth shares his journey through corporate competitions!

The first couple of months of my MBA, I dabbled around with whatever corporate competitions came my way. It was a really bad idea. But it helped me pick up a feel for how to analyze a problem statement, where to look for insights. I also got to know how to filter ideas, how to prepare a presentation and how to tailor the flow to meet the judges’ expectation. How? All by keeping my eyes open and absorbing from fellow contestants.

I then started to prioritize my participation based on my strengths and what I want to take home from those competitions. My inherent curiosity and ability to ask the right questions helped me get good insights around a given case. I found out that I have a knack for business simulation games, so I enjoyed competing in them too.

These competitions were obviously a channel to learn how businesses work on-ground. Moreover, they also provided the opportunity to interact with as many professionals as possible. It helped me learn about their roles, the challenges they face and the company’s culture. Also, I tried and evaluated to see if it was something I was looking for.

Having prior work experience, I was clear on what kind of work environment is most conducive for my growth. So, these interactions helped me narrow down roles and companies I would be passionate about.

My first success was winning Marico Over The Wall Season 5 (2017). It was my very first supply chain case study, and we were just two months into campus. It made us learn a lot of new concepts. Also, we met academicians, visited distributors, benchmarked warehouses and found out the latest innovations in this space.

We also learnt how we should emphasize different aspects of the solution while pitching to different people. E.g. a Planning Head might want to know deeper into certain aspects while the COO may only need a broad understanding of all the aspects. The final round of this competition is as unique as it gets. All three teams were assigned a start-up, each under Marico Innovation Foundation.

We had to work closely with an IoT based start-up and help them scale their production to meet their increasing demand. We started to spend our evenings with them learning about their product and the challenges. I had to push myself beyond the limit, balancing academics and working on this project. Also, I had to be very selective in taking part in any extracurricular work.

With the guidance of our mentor (a supply chain veteran) and the cooperation of the young start-up founders, we managed to take home the title. There were many takeaways from this entire experience. Firstly, I learnt a lot about setting up a production unit, procurement and having an eye for identifying bottlenecks.

Also, I understood the importance of subjects like Organisational Behaviour, a poor workflow hierarchy, and reporting structure could be a deterrent in rapid decision making. This was huge for us. Just six months into our MBA and we were able to help fellow engineers with our business expertise. Not just that, we saw them succeed.

Being the only first-year MBA team in the finals and ending up winning gave us a lot of confidence. Having closely seen the challenges in different areas working with this start-up, classroom lectures started making a lot more sense. The exposure I gained created a concrete base. It started a snowballing effect for all subsequent corporate competitions I took part in.

South a month, J&J’s Quest (2018) launch happened, giving one new supply chain challenge to solve. It started a new round of surveys, hypothesis framing, brainstorming, ideating, benchmarking, making demo models and preparing our pitch. After initial rounds, we were to work closely with an internal team of J&J working on the same project.

Owing to the presence of J&J Head Office in Mumbai, we attended weekly 2-3 meetings with their team discussing our ideas and implementation challenges. This was particularly demanding for us as we were in our busiest semester with dozens of exams, assignments, and projects. But in the end, we took home the Runners Up title.

Business simulation competitions are altogether a different ball game. There is no scope for slack, requiring everyone to be ready and astute. One needs to be prepared and know all the rules. Also, each team member needs to know his or her role before the simulation starts. I was lucky to have had worked in such coherent teams on multiple occasions, most notably for the TAS Invictas (2018).

My basic approach for any business simulation challenge follows 2 steps. First, develop a clear understanding of the constraints and think of the extremes within the rules. Then, jot down the various strategies one could play, the most obvious move opponents might make and be ready with the counters.

But TAS Invictas threw an additional layer of complexity. All the teams were to frame their vision, mission statements and a roadmap on how to achieve it before the start of the simulation. In the end, we were to quickly prepare a presentation for a panel of CXOs. This was a very special day for us, partly because we were the winners and partly because we got the rarest of chances to interact with the top TATA leadership.

With more and more companies rolling out competitions, it is important for you, as a time-starved MBA participant to choose competitions based on what you want to get out of it and not carried away by what fellow candidates are picking. For me, it was on-ground exposure and learning.

I feel privileged and humbled at the same time to be signing off my two years of MBA with 2 National Winner, 1 National Runner Up and 1 National Finalist titles. I can’t thank SPJIMR enough making this possible by bringing together an amazing bunch of friends and teammates, approachable faculty and accommodating administration.

Edited by

P V K Srikanth - SPJIMR Mumbai

(Batch of 2017-19)

P V K Srikanth, an MBA student from SPJIMR Mumbai, is a Chemical Engineer; has interests in Strategy, Operations, and Process Transformation; is an achiever.

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MBA B-School Dare2Compete Awards Dare2Compete Awards 2019 SPJIMR Mumbai