Home Competition Stories Team Brainstorm, NMIMS Mumbai 1st Runners up of L’Oréal Brandstorm 2019 share their secret!

Team Brainstorm, NMIMS Mumbai 1st Runners up of L’Oréal Brandstorm 2019 share their secret!

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Team Brainstorm, NMIMS Mumbai 1st Runners up of L’Oréal Brandstorm 2019 share their secret!

One of the biggest international beauty brand L’Oréal has come up with its most innovative initiative to bring out the best in B-School students. L’Oréal Brandstorm 2019, a unique competition that provides students with a great opportunity to learn and experience the dynamics of the beauty industry. The contest inculcates entrepreneurship skills and creativity skills. L'Oréal Brandstorm is one of the most coveted annual B-School competitions. As one progresses in the competition, the format is such that it allows teams to develop their idea with help of insights from industry professionals and then gives them the opportunity to bring their idea to life at the international incubation centre in Paris, France.

Together we do so much

Our team Brainstorm consists of three members. We all shared the same field of educational background. What really worked well for us, apart from the fact that we were great friends even before the competition, was our similar backgrounds and similar tastes in books, movies and more. All of us are good friends and were well aware of what our team dynamics would be if we decided to participate in this competition together. Thankfully, we did not face any conflict because each of us respected each other's ideas and thoroughly examined them before accepting or rejecting anything. Our journey till the National Finals was close to 5 months long and we learned a great deal along the way.

Here we go

L'Oréal India organized all rounds of the competition smoothly. At each round, our idea was judged by professionals working in different sectors such as R&D, Sales & Marketing to name a few to make sure our solution was truly feasible.

Four teams, including ours, made it to the National Round of L’Oréal Brandstorm 2019. It would be unfair to pick only one team as a tough competitor as each team had a unique proposition in their solution. While some teams included new technologies and great marketing plans in their solution some teams had chalked out their return on investments really well. Each team stood out in one aspect or the other.

To Ideate and Innovate have facts at the ready

Our approach to finding the right solution varied as and when we were in different phases of the competition but the core of our strategy was to first understand what was expected out of our solution. We then decided to ideate and innovate only after being thorough with facts. We worked on our problem statement till the very end of our journey in the competition to make sure our idea was robust, fail-proof and feasible. The biggest challenge was gaining customer insights from foreign markets but with time, patience and persistence, we were able to overcome this as well.

Laughter is indeed the best medicine

Some of the most memorable memories of MBA life happened during our journey with L'Oréal Brandstorm and it is extremely difficult to pick only one memory out of the lot! One such special moment transpired when we were working on our submission for the Regional round of the competition late in the night. We had hit a roadblock while trying to refine our idea and had reached the pinnacle of our frustration when out of nowhere, all of us burst out laughing due to our helplessness. Our laughter fit must have lasted for a full hour giving us not only stomach aches but tonnes of positivity, wholesome moments and the push to continue working hard for the competition.

Edited by

Team Brainstorm-NMIMS Mumbai

2018-2020

Team Brainstorm has three members; Pragya Gupta, Prakhar Gangrade and Prerna Pahuja. Their friendship and support made it possible for them to ace the competition. They all shared a common education background which made the coordination easier.