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Post-event Press Release: 12th October, 2004 "Nothing could have given a more holistic picture of business and corporate strategy". These were the remarks of the teams that contested in Kurukshetra to bag the prestigious Business Excellence Award (BEA) - B-Schools at Xpressions 2004 at XIMB. Kurukshetra, as we know, was the final battleground in Mahabharata; similarly, this game was the last step to fetch the prestigious award and a thumping sum of Rs. 35,000. The game was sponsored by Dr. Reddy's Laboratories. Eight teams were selected on the basis of paper presentations in all functional areas. The game was spread in five quarters and teams had to take all decisions regarding finance, marketing, operations prior to each quarter. Paper boxes were to be made and for that bidding of employees was a crucial step. The shloka 'Yada yada hi dharmasaya, glanir bhavti bharte...', marked the beginning of the battle and then it was time for the great hustle and bustle. Loans, advertising, market research, HR bids, investment, buyback and what not; it was time for strategy and action. How crucial each decision was is illustrated by the fact that due to low bids, a team was deprived of employees in one quarter. Other teams rode the market by buying the shares of the competing teams. When the results of the quarter were declared, heartbeats rose. As the game proceeded, increased the efficiency, rose the productivity and excitement was at its peak. In the mad scramble of during the final quarters, two teams made such huge miscalculations that trading in their shares got suspended leading to utter chaos in the mock market scenario. And finally, team from NITIE bagged the prestigious award and was followed closely by XLRI. The performance by the team from NITIE was particularly stunning as they managed to increase their market capitalization by 200% in a mere 5 quarters by some astute bidding and investments. The team from XLRI gave them a real scare in the second last quarter when in a single quarter their share prices jumped by a whopping 100%. All in all the game was enjoyed and appreciated by everyone. The visiting teams had great words of appreciation for the organizing team of Kurukshetra. The words like awesome and amazing were considered too small by the teams to describe it. Enthused by the response, team Kurukshetra is planning to launch an upgraded version of the game for the corporate sector. So, it's time to wait and watch... Contributed by - |
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