Prerana 2005 – An inspired B-School fest!

Nail biting finishes, astounding business acumen, exacting judges, insightful panel discussions, this year’s edition of Prerana, NITIE’s annual B-school fest, was all this and more. Over the three days, spanning from October 21st to 23rd students from all the top B-schools of the country converged at NITIE, Mumbai to be a part of one of the biggest events in the B-school circuit. Apart from the Mumbai colleges such as S P Jain, IITSOM and NMIMS, the IIMs, ISB, XLRI, FMS and IIFT were well represented. In addition to the regular draws such as the Prerana Business Meet, the Summer Project Contest, the Srijan Case Study Contest and the Prerana Business Quiz, this edition of Prerana hosted many innovative events like the ‘Achievers Talk Show’, the Rock show, ‘Invest’ the equity research game and a host of fascinating red herrings such as ‘Finix’, the strategy game; ‘Connoisseur’, the spot-the-CEO contest and the ‘Billboard’ advertising game.

In the morning of the 21st of October, Prerana, kicked-off in style with the fourth FICCI-Prerana Business Meet, held at the ITC Grand Maratha Sheraton. The guest speakers at the event were Mr. Jaithirth (Jerry) Rao, Chairman and CEO, MphasiS and past Chairman, Nasscom; Dr L S Kanodia, Founder Chairman of TCS and present Chairman of Datamatics; and Mr. K. Ramachandran, CEO of Philips Electronics India Limited. The meeting was hosted by the Director of NITIE, Dr. Subhash D. Awale and Professor Ashok. K. Pundir.

The topic of discussion at the meet was “Brand India: From Emergence to Leadership.” Though, the speakers rued the lost years when the Indian economy sauntered due to inward looking and shortsighted government policy, they were very optimistic of growth in the future given the remarkable progress India has made in the decade since the winds of liberalization swept the country.

Mr. Jerry Rao and Mr. Ramachandran, prodded the budding managers of tomorrow to strive to accelerate India’s transformation from emergence to leadership. They said that given the recent economic trends, India is bound to emerge as a leader many years from now, the question is whether we can hasten the journey.

The Summer Project Contest received over 400 entries this year. The contest had five modules for Marketing, Finance, IT, HR and SCM respectively. The Srijan Case Study contest had live cases sponsored by Orange, Satyam, Subros, etc. Senior members were invited from the corporate world to judge the events. The panelists for the finance events were drawn from companies such as J M Morgan Stanley, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, AIG, etc. The marketing events were judged by senior executives from HLL, RIL, Orange, McCann Erickson, etc. The HR contests were evaluated by panelists from Ranbaxy, ONGC, TSMG, etc. The SCM events carried power packed juries from Maersk Logistics, Stanton Chase, Cargill Foods, Bayer, etc. The IT competitions were judged by distinguished panelists from Satyam, CTS, TCS, MAQ, Kale Consultants, etc.

The Red Herrings involved on-the-spot games which tested the cross functional skills of the B-school crowd that had assembled. FINIX was a finance game which tested the participants’ knowledge of corporate finance, and mergers and acquisitions.‘Connoisseur’,  the spot-the-CEO contest, comprised of three grueling rounds after which a panel drawn from diverse industries grilled contestants in a one-on-one interview to select one candidate for the CEO’s post. The first two rounds of the contest screened the IQ, EQ and business acumen of the contestants through written quizzes. The third round was a test of negotiation skills, wherein the 16 qualifiers were paired up into teams of two and given real life situations that demanded some smooth-talking. The final round was a one-on-one stress interview where the panelists fired questions at the contestants to test their level-headedness. At the end of the grueling four rounds, Varun Rana from NITIE, emerged trumps. ‘Billboard’ the advertising game was judged by Mr. Abu Mallick, Strategic Planning Director, McCann Erickson India. The game was held in three rounds, the first round tested the participant’s awareness of Indian and global advertising. Round two consisted of a print campaign aimed at promoting a social cause. The third round was based on developing a storyline for brands not based in India, or not having a strong presence here. After a keenly fought contest, Team Zero of AICAR business school, emerged as winners for their campaign for CPA (print) and Rolex watches (Eric Clapton). Team Karma Chakra of ICFAI, Hyderabad was runners up, with their presentation for PETA (print) and BOSE QC2 headphones (story line).

The ‘Talk-Show’ conducted on the second evening had speakers drawn from diverse backgrounds such as journalism, acting and social-activism. The panel included Boman Irani, actor and theater artist; Meher Pestonji, author and activist; Srinivasan Jain, Senior Correspondent, NDTV; Naval Bajaj, DCP, Mumbai and Dilip D Souza, author and activist. The speakers discussed how they made career shifts from earlier staid jobs to explore new exciting options. They earnestly urged their B-school student audience to follow their hearts and not allow money to dictate their career choices.

The ‘Decibelz 05’ rock show, saw scintillating performances from ‘Vayu’ and ‘Orange Street.’ After a hard day’s work the budding managers boogied to Indian rock numbers such as ‘More Piya’ and ‘Hare Krishna Hare Ram.’ As the party stretched to the wee hours, the wiz kids at NITIE showed that management is about working hard and partying harder!

The final day saw both corporates and students streaming in for the annual Prerana Business Quiz. This grand event which offers a net prize money of rupees one lakh, has always been a huge draw in the quizzing community. The elimination rounds saw three corporate teams and three student teams make it to the finals. As the sun set on the NITIE lawns, the multi-faceted theater activist cum ace quiz master, Mr. Parnab Mukherjee took stage to conduct the quiz finals. Round after round of scintillating quizzing literally stretched the participants to their wits end. Parnab’s famous ‘newspaper’ round had the audience totally hooked to the quiz till the very end. In fact the winner of PBQ 2005 was determined with the very last question of the quiz. The team from IIMA just managed to scamper home, with the team from Accenture in hot pursuit. The team from S P Jain came in third. Parnab ended with a plea to all quizzers to continue the tradition of serious quizzing that went beyond gimmickry and actually served to disseminate knowledge and awareness in an entertaining format.

MastishK-2005 was also a big success, witnessing more than 40,000 hits and 4000 registrations spanning across 20 countries with over 100 companies participating in it.

As the curtains fell on Prerana 2005, the PGDIM batches of NITIE deserved a pat on the back for the brilliant execution of this fascinating journey called Prerana 05!