TVS Credit E.P.I.C 5.0 Champions Share Learnings From Their Remarkable Journey!

Practice helps sharpen your skills. To provide a platform where one can apply their technical knowledge and skills to real-life problems, one of India’s leading financial service providers, TVS Credit, stepped in by rolling out their campus challenge programme- TVS Credit E.P.I.C.

TVS Credit E.P.I.C or (Enrich Perform Innovate Challenge) offers students an opportunity to work on real-time challenges faced by businesses, apart from an opportunity to interact with experts from the industry. This year, the 5th season of TVS Credit E.P.I.C saw participation from the best minds in the country and ultimately, the brightest ideas reigned supreme. In this article, we will bring out some valuable takeaways from the winners of TVS Credit E.P.I.C 5.0.

Competition Structure and Winners

E.P.I.C Campus Programme had four challenges that students could select from: 

Each track/challenge has 3 rounds namely an online quiz, case study submission and the grand finale. The IT Challenge participants had to go through one additional round - a coding round after the online quiz. Striving for victory, the finalists battled it out in the last round and these were the winners of each track:

The Winning Strategies

For Advait Naik from IIM Bangalore, Analytics Challenge was all about selling the solution as best as one could. In Naik’s words,

“Learning from my past failures, where I didn’t clear the proposal rounds, I'd realised that selling the solution is what it takes to make it past this round. For the finals, the plan was to be as detailed as possible. I focused a lot on the approach and used visualisation aids like flowcharts to simplify the decisions made at each stage, be it problem understanding, exploratory data analysis, feature engineering, or the final solution. I feel I might've overdelivered on the PPT front, as during the finals I was left with the arduous task of presenting over 20 slides in 8 minutes. But still, being detailed helped, because even if I was not able to do justice to each and every slide during the presentation, it still showed the efforts.

The problem was quite demanding overall. It took me about a week to complete the proposal and almost three weeks to create the final presentation. New challenges unraveled as I progressed through the competition, and I had to keep revisiting the drawing board throughout and keep tweaking the solution until the very last day of submission. Lastly, the most challenging aspect was working with the data and deriving actionable insights. Having previously worked with only cleaned datasets used for academic purposes, this was a completely new experience, and I personally learned a lot about data processing and model selection.”

Team GreyLife (IT Challenge), consisting of Badri Akkal and Samanwith KSN - IIIT Lucknow, took the traditional approach to problem-solving and invested a substantial amount of time in research. They said,

“The case demanded considerable effort to unearth and understand diverse technologies for implementation. Our focus rested on securing the most cutting-edge and effective technologies, despite our limited resources on these subjects. However, by dedicating our undivided time to this endeavor, our path was paved for the implementation phase, aiming to introduce these technologies in an appealing and user-friendly manner.”

IIM Kozhikode's Team Explorers, consisting of Sarad Agarwal and Animesh Kumar (Finance Challenge), wanted to highlight all aspects correctly in their case study, which took 3 days to cover everything. Commenting on their team strategy, Sarad and Animesh said,

“Our idea was to present a financial challenge without focusing too much on the numbers and using a storyline that would be engaging for the jury/senior leadership. We went through multiple textbooks, videos, websites to understand the problem at hand and then made several assumptions to come up to the solution. While making the assumptions, we critically examined the associated merits & demerits and also thought of cross-questions that may arise.

In all, we learnt about asset-liability management, stress testing through hands-on calculations and about the risk management strategies & internal controls typically used in the industry.”

For Team Ninjas (Strategy Challenge), comprising Anuja and Atharva from XLRI Jamshedpur, planning a strategy for Gen AI integration was rooted in delivering impactful solutions. Commenting on their strategy, they said,

“Rather than rushing into specific use cases, we embarked on a thorough exploration of opportunities and challenges across the customer journey, ensuring alignment with TVS's true needs. After prioritizing 4 use cases, we delved into the problem each use case would solve and the impact it would have.

We also highlighted how TVS could implement the proposed solutions. We worked on this over 15 days gaining deep insights into TVS's operations and the industry context to identify promising AI integrations. Our challenge was the limited 8-minute presentation time, forcing us to be highly selective and prioritize critical information. Every minute had to reflect the value we could bring to TVS.”

Team Dynamics and Core Strengths 

Bonding is a precondition for any team event. As the saying goes, ‘Coming together is beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is success.’ 

Speaking of teamwork, Advait Naik from IIM Bangalore has never faced any issues. Cooperative team? Not really. Naik was a one-man army throughout the challenge. So whether it was cleaning data, performing analytics for the first time, or picking up new machine learning skills, he was all by himself. There were times when he second-guessed every step he took, but everything panned out well for him in the end.

For Team Explorers from IIM Kozhikode, working together wasn’t a problem. The two teammates knew each other quite well, and to make it even better, they had complementary skills. While Animesh was good at making PPTs and storytelling, Sarad was extremely good at market research and putting together the right content for the problem at hand, given his CA background.

Both of them were equally good at number crunching and making quality discussions around a topic. In case of disagreements, they resolved their conflicts through discussions and thoroughly reviewed each other’s work to improve the final solution.

Similarly, for Team GreyLife from IIIT Lucknow, working together was hassle-free, thanks to their mutual understanding. A few compromises here and there, and they were good to go! 

However, things were a little heated for Atharva and Anuja from XLRI Jamshedpur. Because of their different academic backgrounds, Mechanical Engineering for Atharna and Statistics for Anuja, there were multiple times when the clash of perspectives happened. However, in retrospect, this is what led to a refined solution.

Commenting on their conflicts, Team Ninjas said, “We handled our conflicts by thoroughly discussing our viewpoints. We had a pact to not proceed until we were completely convinced over an issue. This exercise was time-consuming at times, but it helped both of us be 100% convinced about the solution we were proposing and in fact, exposed us to newer ways of thinking.”

A Journey of Life-Long Learnings

For Team Ninjas TVS Credit E.P.I.C was an educational journey. They said,

“We learned the importance of a systematic approach, emphasizing research and synergy among use cases to solve complex problems effectively. The 8-minute presentation constraint sharpened our ability to communicate complex ideas concisely, a valuable skill in professional contexts. We also learned to collaborate effectively and examine a problem from diverse perspectives.”

Similarly, Naik also discovered many challenges which he would never have encountered during classroom sessions. This is what made TVS Credit E.P.I.C 5.0, a wonderful learning experience for him. Team GreyLife and Team Explorers gained valuable insights into effective teamwork and mastered the art of delivering presentations. 

Competitions like TVS Credit E.P.I.C help students push the envelope. They help students understand their strengths and weaknesses and give them an opportunity to showcase their budding ideas and build their confidence. Further, as participants put their skills to the test, they also learn several life-long lessons that transform them into better professionals.

About The Judgement.....

I really appreciate the hard work all the organisers put into the event. The judgement quality was quite high. For the first round of submissions, the expectations were very clearly laid out in the case study. As for the finals, the panel had very high expectations of the presentations, and the same was communicated during the panel introduction. The communication was quite clear throughout the competition, and the organisers at both TVS Credit and Unstop were very prompt in their replies. The competition was structured very well, and adequate time was provided before every submission. Overall, I'm very grateful for the opportunity provided and the experience gained.

                                                          - Advait Naik, Analytics Challenge

E.P.I.C 5.0 saw thousands of participants from different corners of the country dare to take the roller coaster ride full of challenges and learnings, and finally, the best ideas clinched gold. We heartily congratulate all the winners of TVS Credit E.P.I.C 5.0 and wish every participant of this challenge the best for their future. Cheers to #BeingUnstoppable!

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