IIM Lucknow Team Bags 1st Prize in Accenture B-School Challenge

A team from IIM Lucknow has bagged the first prize in the second edition of the annual Accenture B-School Challenge in which management students from across India presented a case study on an innovative and disruptive digital strategy for a company.

The team from IIM Ahmedabad was the first runner-up and the team from IIM Kozhikode the second runner-up. The top three winning team members received a pre-placement Interview opportunity with Accenture, besides other prizes.

Of the total 1700 teams that participated in the online quiz, 15 teams per campus were selected for the second round. Five teams made it to the third round and eventually one team per campus was chosen in the final round.

More than 5000 students from 10 business schools had formed as many as 1700 teams to participate in the challenge that kicked off on August 21 in a four-stage competition. The finals took place in New Delhi where the top 10 teams presented a case study.

The participating schools included IIM Calcutta, Indian School of Business (ISB), JBIMS (Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies), SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) and Xavier School of Management (XLRI).

The first part of the challenge was a rapid-fire online quiz on business, Accenture, digital and general knowledge related topics. It was followed by a business simulation where students stepped into the role of a CEO to make their company profitable and a case study challenge on a disruptive digital strategy for an industry. The grand finale saw the top teams battling it out on an overnight case study challenge.

Of the total 1700 teams that participated in the online quiz, 15 teams per campus were selected for the second round. Five teams made it to the third round and eventually one team per campus was chosen in the final round.

In each round, the participating teams demonstrated their innovative ideas to reshape businesses for the digital era in all aspects such as customer experience, internal operations and the business model.

The jury that decided the top three teams included Sanjay Dawar, Accenture Capability Network India Lead, Products Global Capability Network Lead, Accenture;  Rohit Thakur, managing director – Human Resources, Accenture in India; Avnish Sabharwal, managing director – Accenture Ventures in India; Arati Deo, managing director – AI capability for Accenture Technology; Nitin Bawankule, Country Director, India, Google Cloud;  Prof Janat Shah, Operations & Supply Chain Management at IIM Udaipur;  Anuj Tiwari, CEO of Digital Business for Aakash Institute; Srinivasan Iyengar, COO at Reliance Nippon Life Insurance; Rajeev Batra, Group CIO, BCCL.