The event started with the Director, Dr B S Sahay, Director, IMT Ghaziabad, extending a warm welcome to both the guests and the students. This was followed by Mr Karthik Raina, a well known marketing practitioner and consultant, expressing his views on the fact that there was no marketing without passion. His speech was liberally sprinkled with quotes from Napolean Hill and Peter Drucker.

Next on the agenda was a real life case discussion, followed by a note by Mr. Anoop Kumar Verma on Using Consumer Intelligence to drive your brand.

The Marketing Warfare which followed next saw issues such as ‘The Journey of Marketing in the world of Practice and Reality, Sales in the changing Indian market scenario’ and ‘Integrated Marketing Communication in a B2B market’ being discussed by Mr Anoop Kumar Verma, Mr Animesh Puri, and Ms Jaba Sen Menon.

Next up, Mr Rajiv Mathur , Mr Jaideep Bajaj and Mr Pritesh Chotani enumerated on the paradigm shifts in marketing by discussing the new brands and their relevance in a competitive environment such as India with an example of how to create a health care brand in real life.
Mr Arun Kohli, Mr Sumit Gupta, and Mr Paras Goel spoke about the changing dynamics of retail banking in the afternoon session which was devoted to the topic of customer power where the delegates enthused the students with their notes on virtual routes and rural strategies.

Disha ’07 was the highlight of the final session, that saw teams from IMT, MDI, IIFT and LBS present their research on the current retail scenario in India. Their task was to suggest the next twenty locations at which PRIL could establish its KB Fair Price shops, as well as the products and services that could be offered here. They were also required to come up with strategies to ward off competition from mom and pop stores. The contest was won by the team from IIFT and team IMT followed suite.

The event ended with a valedictory session where all the speakers were felicitated. The conference was a great learning experience for the enthusiastic bunch of student managers. As Prakriti Banka, a first year student of IMT-G aptly puts it, “we were made aware of the realities which are beyond what is taught to us in class or mentioned in our books.”