1) aBusiness and Lawa: conducted by Prof Anurag K Agarwal, an alumnus of Harvard Law School and currently a faculty member in the business policy area at IIM, Ahmedabad.
2) aUnderstanding Business Transformationa: conducted by Prof Sunil Maheshwari as a part of the Young Managers Program (YMP).
3) aLeadership skills in Todayas Managersa: conducted by Prof Manikutty of IIM Ahmedabad.
Speaker Series:
The first speaker session at Confluence 2008 was initiated by Mr Bhaskar Bhatt, the Managing Director of Titan. Mr Bhatt was followed by Mr. Harsh Mariwala, Chairman and Managing Director of Marico Limited. The second session of Confluence 2008 was chaired by Prof. MM Monipally of IIM Ahmedabad. The speakers were Ms. Sangitha Reddy, Executive Director Apollo Hospitals and Dr. Indiresan, Former Director, IIT Madras.
The Speaker series continued on the third day of Confluence 2008, starting with a session by Ms. Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self Employed Womenas Association (SEWA) and Dr. Dipak C Jain, Dean of the Kellogg School of Management. The post lunch session had a discussion chaired by Prof. Atanu Ghosh, of the business policy area at IIM Ahmedabad and also faculty coordinator for Confluence 2008. The speaker for the session was Glenn Saldanha a MD and CEO of Glenmark Pharmaceuticals. Another session was chaired by Prof. Ajay Pandey of Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and it had Prof. SP Kothari, Head of Department of Economics, Finance & Accounting, and Gordon Y Billard Professor of Management, MIT Sloan giving their views on the current financial crisis.
Panel Discussions:
1) aThe Dimensions of Wealtha: Chaired by Prof. G Raghuram of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. The speakers on the panel included Mr.Hasit Joshipura, Managing Director, GSK Pharmaceuticals, Mr.Bhushan Punani, Founder and Executive Director, Blind Peopleas Association, Mr Arvind Sharma, Chairman, Leo Burnett and Mr Ashank Desai, Chairman, Mastek.
2) aInnovation and Creativity – Sustainable levers of Wealth Creationa. The panel featured Dr Dipak Jain, Dean, Kellogg School of Management, Mr. Vardan Kabra, Founder, Fountainhead Schools, Mr. Prabhat Pani, CEO, Ginger Hotels and Mr Nayan Parikh, Chief Executive of Nayan Parikh & Consultants (NPC). Prof Errol DaSouza, faculty member from IIM Ahmedabad was the chairperson for the session.
Events:
1) TATA Think Tank, was a team debate event. Six teams from IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Kozhikode, MDI Gurgaon, FMS Delhi and SP Jain Mumbai participated in this invitational event. Arijit Ganguly, Kaustubh Bhatnagar and Vivek Mandhata from IIM Kozhikode went on to bag the first position while Sudeep Kashyap, Peeyush Garg and Srividhya from IIM Ahmedabad secured the second place.
2) Nestle conducted aMunching Forwarda, a strategy planning contest for
its brand aMuncha. The winning team consisted of Sandeep Gupta, Saurabh
Sharma, Saifee Ahmed, Rohit Karan and K.V. Krishna from IIMA. A
workshop on aManaging Global Brands in a local contexta by Stewart
Dryburgh a General Manager, Nestle India followed the contest.
3) The Fourth Dimension involved 56 teams comprising of members belonging to different institutes. The event included market simulation and business optimization strategies. The team comprising Saurabh Gambhir (IIMA), Srinivas B (XLRIJamshedpur), Kanchanvaja (NRIBM) and Vasim Makda (SLIMS) walked away with the first prize of Rs. 30,000. The second prize was awarded to team comprising Puneet Raheja (IIMA), Sunny Bhasin (Nestle), Sakshi Goenka (ICFAI Business School) and Vaibhav Dhawan (TISS, Mumbai).
4) TATA Globalisation Challenge was an invitation only event open to a few B-schools. Three teams representing IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Lucknow and IIM Indore graduated to the final round where they had to present the financial structure of the deal along with a bid price.
5) Strategy game aBootstrapa, received entries from 33 teams. In the preliminary stage, the reports were evaluated by eminent faculty members from IIMA and representatives from Cognizant to arrive at the 6 finalists Team Aspire (NMIMS), D 10 Consulting (IIM A), DreamZ (IIM K), Fulcrum (SP Jain IMR), Team Hitchhikers (IIM A) and Terza Rima (FMS). During the finals, the teams were given 15 minutes each to present their analysis and recommendations to the judge, Prof V Venkata Rao, faculty member in the Computer and Information Systems area at IIM Ahmedabad. The first prize of Rs. 50,000 went to Terza Rima (FMS, Delhi), represented by Shivani Poddar, Gaurav Malhotra and Nikhil Jain while the second prize of Rs. 25000 was bagged by Team Aspire from NMIMS, Mumbai, who were represented by Sounak, Nandi, Jubin Pandey and Suvo Ghosh.
6) Vault Operandi was an SBI sponsored two round event which tested teams on their knowledge about the current banking sector regulations and the challenges that banks are facing to adapt to the change. The first round was a qualification quiz which tested the knowledge of the participants about the current practices and norms in the banking sector. 98 teams participated in this round and six teams were shortlisted (four from IIMA, one from each IIMK and NMIMS) for the second round, which was a case study based competition. The qualifying teams were given a case study about a bank and they had to present the challenges the bank may face in trying to comply with the BASEL II norms. Participants were asked to identify the problems and suggest solutions. The team from IIMA comprising Amit Mittal, Chinmay Joshi and Karthik Reddy won the first prize money worth Rs. 50,000 and the team from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies comprising Abhishek AD, Rohit Muhtoo and Vaibhav Kapoor won the second prize worth Rs. 30,000.
7) aThe Soothsayer A Simulation Modeling Contesta, shortlisted five teams from IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, SP Jain, Mumbai and IMI, New Delhi to develop a model for the resolution of the economic crisis in the fictional nation of Xanadu. The winning team from IIM A comprised of Anirudh M Reddy, Amit Gupta, Manas Vijh, Meghna Jain, Tejasvi Nori and Vaibhav Shintre. The winners received a cash prize of Rs. 50,000.