Kurukshetra – Do you have it in you to be the last one standing?

Our experience: The Journey from Mumbai to Bhubaneswar and then back to Mumbai

12th October 2006 10:30 pm

2 days before the start of our diwali vacations… I somehow managed to get my tickets booked earlier and had reached home by that time…
Tring Tring… Amit calling…I ended up waking everyone up at home when I let out a shriek… “Woooow thts a good news… Our paper got selected for OpsVeda!!”

And also Vishal and Ganga’s paper got through for Markveda.

2 teams from SPJIMR entering the fiercest battle ever fought in the world of business – the Kurukshtra.

3rd November 2006 08:30 am

ENTERING GURUKUL

The D day dawned. It was a sense of pride indeed for me to be there competing against the likes of IIM ABCK, XLRI, MDI, TAPMI and XIMB. After wishing each other good luck we took different ways to our respective venues.

I was totally blank that morning. No fear… No tension…No expectation…No anxiety… Blank means blank… We were told as soon as we entered that we would be presenting first. First mover’s advantage proved to be a disadvantage. The projector did not co-operate. With few hits here and there we got it working. I tried to crack a joke in the meantime and somehow got the judges smiling. Finally we started again with a Good Morning to all.

Our presentation was finally over and with every team coming up on stage the competition grew fierce. After couple of hours results were out. Ganga and Vishal (MarkVeda) progressed to Chakravyuh, the next round. The competing teams in MarkVeda being equally strong all the four teams were qualified to the next round. Amit and I stood first in OpsVeda and it was indeed rewarding for the efforts that went into the making of the paper after much research and survey.

3rd November 2006 12:30 am

Piercing Chakravyuh- Business Decision making game

A briefing was given as to how this game chakravyug is like.. Man!! Can’t help remembering how Abhimanyu in Mahabharata could break through the chakravyug but couldn’t come out of it.. When they were briefing exactly that’s what was what it looked like.. A one way puzzle..

The rules of the round were as follows. There were a set of few games that had to be played in this round. Points gathered in each game as a team would be getting accumulated. Each team of 2 were combined with another different team of 2 and had to play each game and win as the new team of 4.. Yeaah!! Co(m)opetition was what you can call that.. We were not allowed to carry money along with us. All that was told was the games are going to be played in various parts of the city Bhuvaneswar. Well..Once the briefing got over we finally got into our respective Sumo’s and started off to the place where we had to play our first game “ Sell as much as you can”.

But! Sell what?? Wotever was the answer… Each team (New team of 4) was given Rs 500 and were just left all alone in a Market place.. We had to decide what to buy and sell for that 500 bucks and make money out of that.. Our team decided to buy some stationary, bundle it as a package and sell it.. Hell of a trick we had to play to convince people to buy that stuff.. It worked way too far.. We gained the most no. of points in that round.. Believe you me! We made a profit of somewre arnd 200 bucks.. There were series of more games following that like “Build your office” in which we had to decide what are the 15 most important items that I would buy to set up a BPO company given a budget constraint.. We had go to 4 different vendors and choose our products. And the vendors were located kilometers apart.. No transport..No money.. We had to hitchhike and reach the places. Do I need to elaborate on how the experience would have been?

Gaawd!! People thought we ve gone crazy.. We were running on the main roads to save time instead of waiting for vehicles to hitchhike. I never saw anything of Bhuvaneswar except for the roads :-). Was running, running and running..

A wonderful game built to put the entrepreneurial, managerial and decision making skills to test.

So what do you think the results board showed at the end of it all.. Ofcourse we had to be there.. Of all the 12 teams that progressed to Chakravyuh, top 8 ( I think so!!) got qualified to the next round… And prize money was waiting for the top 2.. Now don’t tel me you dint guess who they were?? Indeed our 2 teams from SPJIMR!!!! Hip Hip Hurray!!! Party.. Party!!! And we partied that night with Band of Boys

One hell of a day was it.. We won, won and won.

4^th November 2006, 9:30 am

Somehow I had to push myself out of the bed.. The muscle catches and pains from last day’s running.. Gaawd save me.. Finally, got ready and met these guys in their dorm and we proceeded towards the final round – Kurukshtra. Indeed! It was going to be a battle ground. War of the worlds- the B-Worlds.

Kurukshetra was a Business Simulation game where in we were supposed to run a virtual business for 6 financial years by managing and making decisions on the functions like Operations, Marketing, HR and Finance. At the end of every financial year the share price of each team according to how much they could virtually sell and make profit of was displayed. Selling was purely dependent on the Market segment chosen. Factors like skills of labour chosen (or poached after first fin yr), wages offered to them, dividend decisions, product variety selection etc.etc. will decide your share price. Wot a game it was!! Indeed a war…Teams looking into other teams production and labour skills and poaching on them, tactically choosing market segments, carefully deciding on the dividends etc. etc all such decisions had to done in a matter of seconds.. Yeaah.. we were timed and every decision had to be made in just 20 seconds. Can you beat that?

It was fun… We couldn wait for the final results as we had to board the train at 2:30 pm.. We finished the game, rushed and gathered our luggages and left XIMB with loads of memories. While in auto we made frantic calls to find out who won. Our team’s ( Myself and Amit ) share price was the highest till then. We had all chances of winning. But unfortunately a wrong decision on operations at the last round had left a pile of inventory at the end which made me feel something can go wrong. And it did.. But not terribly. We won the Third place.

A little happy, little sad..I watched the train move…Ofcourse from inside the train ;-)

But any moment I could be out.. Our tickets were on wait list.. ;-) I can actually write another story on how we reached Mumbai from Bhuvaneswar.. If you r interested, write to me.

Cheers,

Sukanya.