IIM Bangalore students win Accenture B-School Challenge to identify disruptive digital strategy

Accenture, a global professional services leader on Tuesday announced top winners of the third edition of the annual Accenture B-School Challenge.

The challenge was aimed at identifying disruptive ideas, and top talent for the digital economy, and was focused on the theme of ‘Innovating in the NEW.’ More than 5000 students from 10 premier business schools in India participated in the annual competition.

The first prize was awarded to the team from IIM(Indian Institute of Management) Bangalore. The first runner up team was from FMS(Faculty of Management Studies) followed by second runner up team from ISB(Indian School of Business). The top three winning team members received a pre-placement interview opportunity with Accenture, besides other exciting prizes.

The challenge kicked off on August 21, 2019 across campuses, concluded in a grand event in Gurugram where the top 10 teams from each campus presented a case study on disruptive digital strategy centered around Innovation.

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

This year, the challenge was divided into four stages: rapid-fire online quiz; business simulation where students stepped into the role of a CEO to make their company profitable; case study challenge and finally, the grand finale in Gurugram where top teams battled it out on an overnight case study challenge. Over 1600 teams participated in the online quiz, of which 30 teams were selected per campus for the second round. Ten 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, managing director and lead for capability network, Accenture in India; Lakshmi C, managing director and lead for human resources, Accenture in India; Christopher Arnold, Director Analytics, Wells Fargo India; Rajesh Rampal, Group CIO, Essel Group; Sanjay Singhal, COO, ITC Foods; Samyukth Sridharan, President and COO, Cleartrip.com; Rajeev Batra, Group CIO, BCCL.

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions — underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network — Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders.