Kicking off with a debate on ‘Services will drive India’s Economy tomorrow’, the Business Today-Aditya Birla Group Acumen 2006 National B-school Challenge opened its east zone regionals at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta’s Joka campus on Friday.

Besides from Calcutta based Bschools, MBA students from Kharagpur and Bhubhaneswar turned up for the event, each of them eyeing the coveted slots representing east zone at the national finals.

The preliminary and quarter-final rounds yielded semi finalists of the Debate event in Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management (IISWBM) students Saikat Gupta and Bula Panigrahi who shall face the VGSOM, IIT Kharagpur duo Bala Subramaniam and Ranjana Joy Choudhary to debate if ‘Sensex is a misleading indicator of the Indian economy’.

The other two semi finalist teams in Institute of Business Management, Jadavpur University, Calcutta’s Saikat Dutta and Swarnangka Samaddar and IIM-C’s Arzi Adui and Vikram Gunjal shall debate if the ‘Indian consumer is price obsessed’.

A nail biting Quiz preliminary event sent the Army Institute of Management, Kolkata’s Sumit Kumar Naik and Rahul Pachauri, IIM-C’s Puneet Jain, Rahul Gupta, Eastern Institue of Management, Kolkata’s Aritra Pramnaik, Amitava Bhattacharya and VGSOM, IIT Kharagpur’s Anuja Gulati and Anghshuva Bhaduri to the East zone finals.