IIM Lucknow Students Win PepsiCo Challenge; Become Indra Nooyi’s Advisors

IIM Lucknow Students Win PepsiCo Challenge; Become Indra Nooyi’s Advisors

PepsiCo, the world’s largest selling food & beverage company, announced the results of its B-school Challenge 'Taste the Success - Become Indra’s Advisors'.

The second edition of 'Taste the Success - Become Indra’s Advisors’ had been divided into two rounds - the first being the newly-introduced Business Simulation, and the second, a Case Study Contest. The game of Business Simulation - a virtual battle of brains, which truly tests the participant’s acumen in handling business related challenges - witnessed 582 entries. After a grueling round, winning hands-down was Markarax, the three member team from IIM, Lucknow.

Following this was the case study category aptly titled 'PepsiCo: The Corporate Citizen' that revolved around the belief that corporations today are intrinsically connected to the community and the world around it, and have a clear responsibility to help enrich society. The emerging winner was the team from IIM Khozikode called Fade to Blue. The category winners (business simulation as well as case study) won Rs. 50,000 cash prize plus PPI.

The overall winning team (Markarax) members, namely Chittaranjan Mishra, Ankit Dhingra, and Ashutosh Bhatt will be flown to PepsiCo Headquarters in New York where they will present and discuss their case solution with Ms. Indra Nooyi, Chairperson & CEO, PepsiCo Inc. They have also won themselves a Pre-Placement Offer (PPO) at PepsiCo. The runners-up team (Fade to Blue) members, namely Burhan Hussain, Mayank Singh, and Prashant Gangwal, received a cash award of INR 1,00,000/- and Pre-Placement Interview (PPI) at PepsiCo.

Presenting the awards to the winners, Mr. Pavan Bhatia, Executive Director, HR, PepsiCo India, said, "We at PepsiCo are extremely glad to have designed such an interactive platform for the new talent of today. Every case study that we received from the management students was outstanding in itself and correctly captured the essence of the competition. It was inspiring and heartening to engage with some of the students whose case studies were extremely insightful and innovative. It gives us immense pleasure to present the awards to the most-deserving team from IIM Lucknow. We are looking forward to working together with the students to see if elements of the winning business strategy may be implemented at PepsiCo."

He further added, "This year, we also launched a unique element in the contest called the Business Simulation Round. Since this round tested participants on key managerial and leadership skills on a virtual platform, the validity of this test for recruitment purposes was also high. We received tremendous participation in this part of the contest, and more than 1700 students matched their wits against each other. Overall, the experience was both exciting and value generating. We are thankful to all the management institutes for their participation and hope to provide regular platforms for such interaction."

Sharing her/his experience, a member of the wining team said, "It was an enthralling experience to be a part of the event, and to interact with the eminent leaders of corporate India. The competition was really tough with more than 1700 participants from top B-schools of the nation. We have participated and won many events in the past, but Taste the Success @ PepsiCo 2008 is clearly above the rest."

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