IIM-B puts India Inc to test

Come September and the StartUp Club at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore gears up to host one of India's largest management festivals. This year too, it was no different and Vista 2004 took off on a flying note on September 17.

Of all the events, the business case contest, sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation, Singapore is the most popular among the thousand odd participants. The executives from leading corporates, students from the IIMs and Indian Institutes of Technology and other top business and undergraduate schools from across the country fight it out over a case with an enthralling mix of strategy, marketing, finance and other functional areas.

It provides an opportunity to the corporates to put their working life experiences to a real life case. They are given problems where all that they have learnt as executives are put to test.

This war of strategy sees these people, whom IIM-B optimistically describes as "the architects of India's tomorrow", design various strategies for corporates. Held in two phases, the first stage of this business case contest requires contestants to analyse a given case and submit their analysis in the form of a power point presentation limited to 25 slides. Selected teams are then required to submit a detailed report of the same analysis, followed by a presentation.

In 2003, over1600 people from B-schools across India participated in Online at Nine, a unique blitzkrieg of online events hosted as a build up to Vista.

Then, there is an international paper-writing contest called Manifestations, which received 461 entries this time. From live case-challenges and exciting brain-teasers to serious workshops, Vista offers several interactive and challenging events for B-schools and companies. The build-up to Vista 2004 began with a series of daily games on innovation at leading companies, played online and customised for the company of the day.

Students from top global B-schools, like London Business School, Graduate School of Business, Chicago and New York University Stern School of Business are also part of Vista.

Bzzwings, the business plan contest saw a torrent of new entrepreneurial ideas. Bzzwings 2004 received 256 entries from corporates, B-schools and engineering colleges from across the country. A two-tiered judging process was followed for the first round. In tier one; the executive summaries were given to the judges on the basis of their areas of expertise. 22 entries were short listed after this round.  In tier two, top seven entries are again selected (and 3 teams waitlisted) by a distinguished panel of judges.

It's a pity that none of these ideas translate into reality, as the number of entrepreneurs that the IIMs turn out from its graduating class every year remains disappointingly small.

The companies, which are participating in Vista 2004 include Intel, Toyota Kirloskar, TVS, L & T, Texas Instruments, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, I-Flex, Mistral, Sasken, Geometric, IBM, CTS, Hewlett Packard, Sonata, Honeywell, Aditi Software, AMD, Oracle, Philips, Tata Consultancy Services, Cadence, Vysya, HSBC, Motorola, Hughes Software, Yahoo and Accenture.