The West Zone regionals of the Business Today – Aditya Birla Group Acumen 2007 National B-school Challenge kicked off at Mumbai’s Welingkar Institute of Management, campus on Friday 26 October, 2007.
The weekend Acumen fever started off with 20 debate teams and 29 quiz teams turning up from across Pune, Mumbai, Navi-Mumbai and Gujrat management schools. The preliminary rounds yielded IIM A, Institute of Rural Management Anand, SCMHRD Pune and Welingar Institute of Mangement as debate semi-finalists while IIM A also made it to the quiz finals along with SJM-SoM IIT Bombay, SIBM Pune and NMIMS.
On the second day of the event, students from Mumbai b-schools started pouring into the Welingkar Institute of Management auditorium. The thrill in the atmosphere was unmistakable, more so from Welingkar students who had turned up in huge numbers to cheer for their quiz team. Judging by the huge turnout, the fact that simultaneous festivals were on at other b-schools in the city seemed to have no effect on Acumen.
The event came into full swing when host and quizmaster Harsha Bhogle joined the teams on the stage, quick with his trademark wit. The first round of the semi-final debate competition witnessed Vinamra Srivastava and Mohit Sadani of IIM Ahmedabad speaking for the motion while Giridhar Gopal Bagri and Nayana Renukumaran of IRMA spoke against the motion ‘An MBA is the most over-hyped academic qualification in India today.’ A most relevant topic for everyone in the crowd, leading Harsha to speculate that the topic could take a high-voltage turn. One could argue that the IRMA team lost because they were in a sort of uncomfortable self-contradictory position vis-a-vis the motion, but still they put on a good fight against the IIM Ahmedabad team that won this round.
The second round saw Navtej Singhand Ashwin Jain of SCMHRD speaking for the motion and Deepak Verma and Raj Singh Chauhan of Welingkar speaking against the motion ‘Economic reforms in India have benefited only the rich.’ The subject saw a volley of facts, data and statistics thrown between the teams but in the end, constructive and meaningful arguments constructed over those statistics helped Welingkar win the round.
West Zone finalists IIM Ahmedabad and Welingkar Institute of Management then spoke on the motion ‘Soft skills, more than technical proficiency, are what separate the great managers from the good ones.’ The Welingkar team, speaking for the motion, stressed on the importance of soft skills quoting examples such as Mahatma Gandhi. On the other hand the IIM A team, which was speaking against the motion, argued that that an individual had to prove his technical know-how and only then the soft skills came into picture. They said that no matter how much PR or marketing an individual did for himself, he could not prove his worth in his organization without proving his technical abilities.
Each contestant spoke for three minutes followed by questions and answers to the opponent team. Things went interesting when the judges HR Shashikant – Senior President, Group Human Resources, Aditya Birla Group and Pavan Varshnei, Publishing Director, Business Today asked questions to the teams. Mr Varshnei asked the IIM A team what percentage of technical skills and soft skill they would consider while selecting a CEO for their organization. IIM A team answered the question very diplomatically, saying they would consider more of soft skills than technical abilities for a CEO as he would have already proved his abilities in the initial stages of his career. While for a fresh graduate they would look for technical skills above than soft skills, they added.
At this stage, Harsha opined that the debates in final rounds were much more mature as compared to semi-finals. Eventually, IIM A’s Vinamra and Mohit won the West Zone regional to reach the natinal debate finals.
The B-School quiz finals for West Zone followed. Souvik Basu and Govind Grewal of NMIMS, Prashant Sampath and Chaitanya Marathe of SJM-SoM IIT B, Tanmay Kumar and Alok Malshet of SIBM and Srinath TB and Abid EH of IIM A took their positions. NMIMS made a good head start in the first round itself.
Harsha made the quiz a very interactive session involving both the teams and the audience. Questions that where not answered by contestants were thrown to the audience. After one such answer from a college student, Harsha aimed a gift box towards him warning that “If you don’t catch, it will strike the man sitting in front of you who anyway is losing hair like me and you will be responsible,” to roaring laughter.
NMIMS won the finals with a perfect score of 135, leaving behind SJM-SoM IIT B at 85, SIBM at 40 and IIM A far off at 15. It was really strange to see one team of IIM A rocking the debate competition and the other losing out badly in quiz competition.
Later in the evening, Harsha’s humor hormones were active again at the Alumni quiz competition. IIFT alumnus Saurabh Goel and FMS Delhi alumnus Rakesh Taklikar were the winners of the alumni quiz competition.