The ACE Experience 2018: Team Hashtag IIM Shillong

When the results were being announced, my heart was in my mouth. There was a point where I even thought of slipping behind the hoarding for a speedy exit! When the judges called out our team’s name, I stood in utter disbelief. We had worked so hard, we were so confident, and yet we couldn’t believe it when the results were announced.

It is an opportunity to work on a real industry problem that required us to use all the concepts learned in class and pushes us to go beyond.

Nervousness, excitement, and confusion. That was exactly what was going through our minds during those six days of solving the case. Going through endless research articles, playing with data, and using lots of caffeine as input, we were searching for that Eureka! idea but we did not the path to get there. Soon we realised that it’s not the idea but the approach towards the solution, the in-depth analysis and the feasibility is what brings the ‘eureka-ness’ in your idea. Talking about conflicts, the best way to judge your idea is to have good critics inside your team. There were times when we debated endlessly on certain issues and thus pushing each other's limit to get that edge over other competitors.

There were 5 teams each for the finale of both the Operations and Consumer Behaviour cases. All teams were equally competitive and so with each presentation, our hearts were in our mouth.

The operations case was really tough as it had current industry problems in uncertain environments with lots of constraints.

While looking back we find, participating in Amazon Ace gave us a huge opportunity to learn. The experience of connecting with participants from across the country and Amazon’s business leaders will be one that will stay with us for life.

Talking about the experience, there was a moment when my brain froze right before the submission deadline. We felt so helpless that I almost gave up. I remember my teammate Aakash pushing us to keep it together and focus for just the next 20 minutes until the submission. The secret sauce was completed when at the final moment my other teammate Sugandhi showed off his MS Excel prowess, churning out data at astonishing speeds. 

Do you have your eyes set on winning ACE Challenge 2018? Read more about ACE Challenge 2018 and the organizers Amazon to cover all your basis. Other competition organised by Amazons is Alexa Skills Hackathon.