What helped us taste victory at Airtel iCreate 2020? -By First Runners up, Team IIMPACT from IIM Bangalore

Airtel iCreate 2020 helped us to grow in a way we could have never imagined and gave us an experience we’ll never forget for the rest of our lives. Participating in such a prestigious competition is a big thing in itself and the cases made it even more interesting. When our name was announced on the stage the feeling was surreal. For a moment, we couldn't believe it when our Team's name came up!

Our impactful strategy for Airtel iCreate 2020

We stuck to our structure and started with interviewing as many customers as possible. It took us a good amount of time to get the submission deck ready before each round of Airtel iCreate 2020. The most challenging phase was to balance the overall solution and to cover just the right amount of details.

Not being on campus was inconvenient sometimes but fortunately, all three of us made time for the meetings and we had the deliverables set after each one of them. Interviewing customers remotely was a challenge too, but we managed to do a good mix of offline and online interviews. We never faced any major conflicts. The competition was organized extremely smoothly by Unstop (formerly Dare2Compete)and Airtel. In addition, the mentoring sessions were also pretty helpful.

All three of us were very thorough with the parts that we took responsibility for. Because of that, we had a good quality of content and all we had to do was to fit everyone's work and structure it properly.

The little things that matter

There were 15 teams in the finale and most of them were working on the same case that we had chosen. However, our toughest competitor was also from IIM Bangalore, Team Conquerers, and they worked on the same case as we did.

When we started with the case, we had absolutely no idea about the surveillance industry. But by the time we were done, we had a full-fledged business model in place. The biggest learning was to derive a comprehensive solution starting from scratch and backing it with the data we collected via interviews, surveys, and secondary research.

Also, not to forget to mention one of the special moments when our team's name was announced. All three of us were on a call and none of us could believe it at first. Only when the team name was announced again, we could believe it! All in all, the journey of Airtel iCreate 2020 shall always remain close to our hearts.

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