The West Zone regional rounds of the Business Today – Aditya Birla Group Acumen 2007 National B-school Challenge kicked off at Mumbai’s Welingkar Institute of Management, campus on Friday, October 26 2007.

The weekend quizzing and debating fever started off with 20 debate teams and 29 quiz teams turning up from across Pune, Mumbai, Navi-Mumbai and Gujarat Management schools. The preliminary rounds yielded IIM A, IRMA, SCMHRD and Welingkar institute of Management as debate semi-finalist at the same time another team of IIM A could also make it to quiz semi-finals along with IIT B, SIBM and NMIMS.

The D-day 27 October 2007 brought a new excitement and as the students started pouring in the campus of Welingkar Institute of Management one could experience the thrill and fun in the atmosphere. The event came into full swing with Harsha Bhogle joining the teams and taking them forward. The host, Welingkar Institute of Management left no stones unturned to make it a memorable one. The feel, the atmosphere, the sound system, the stage and a chick co-host of Harsha Bhogle made it a perfect arrangement for the B-School student’s most awaited event.

The first round of semi-final debate competition witnessed Vinamra Srivastava and Mohit Sadani of IIM Ahmedabad speaking for the motion while Giridhar Gopal Bagri and Nayana Renukumaran of IRMA speaking against the motion ‘An MBA is the most over-hyped academic qualification in India today.’ The second round saw Navtej Singhand Ashwin Jain of SCMHRD speaking for the motion and Deepak Verma and Raj Singh Chauhan of Welingkar speaking against the motion ‘Economic reforms in India have benefited only the rich.’ IIM Ahmedabad and Welingkar institute of management could finally make it to Final West Zone Debate Competition.

What next followed was an interesting session of B-School quiz competition. Harsha Bhogle addressed a packed auditorium and Souvik Basu and Govind Grewal, students of NMIMS, Prashant Sampath and Chaitanya Marathe of IIT B, Tanmay Kumar and Alok Dattatray Malshet of SIBM and Srinath T. B and Abid E H of IIM A. As the competition took off NMIMS made a head start by scoring highest.
Harsha, like always, made it a very interactive session by involving the audience and the audience too responded him quite openly. After every question the audience would slowly ‘Murmur’ the answer and Harsha would ask them not to prompt. Questions that where not answered by the contestant where asked to the audience and one who gave a right answer received a gift by Harsha. After one such answer from a college student Harsha aimed a gift box towards him warning him “If you don’t catch, it will strike the man sitting in front of you who is as is it is losing hair like me and then you are responsible.” The guy made it a perfect catch. For another student who gave a right answer and started moving a little forward to catch the gift, Harsha said why don’t you come on the stage then there is no catch. Hearing this he went behind but again Harsha said “Now who so ever gets the catch will get the gift. “ Harsha was really bad at times and this time too the winner missed the catch and someone in the front could catch it. So Harsha was smart enough to say, “Come on, now give him the prize after all it’s just a T-shirt!”
NMIMS made it a perfect score of 135 leaving behind IIT B at 85, SIBM at 40 and IIM A far off at 15. It was really strange to see one team of IIM A rocking at debate competition and the other losing out badly in quiz competition.
What followed next was the much awaited B-school debate competition, with IIM A and the host school, Welingkar’s contestants. Team Welingkar spoke for the motion and Team IIM A spoke against the motion ‘Soft skills, more than technical proficiency, are what separate the great managers from the good ones.’
The Welingkar team stressed on the importance of soft skills and quoted various examples to support their argument said an individual cannot climb the ladder of success without good soft skills. The most impact full one was an example of Ghandhiji. On the other hand the IIM A teams focused on technical proficiency by saying that an individual has to prove his technical know how and only then the soft skills come into picture. They said no matter how much PR or marketing an individual does for himself he cannot prove his worth or gain respect in his organization without proving his technical abilities.
Each contestant spoke for 3 minutes followed by questions and answers to the opponent team. Things went interesting when the judges H R Shashikant – Senior President, Group Human Resources, Aditya Birla Group and Pavan Varshnei, Publishing Director, Business Today came into picture. Pavan Varshnei asked individual questions to both the teams and one of the interesting questions asked to IIM A team was what percentage of technical skills and soft skill they would consider while selecting a CEO for their organization for some one who is already a CEO and someone who is a fresh MBA like them? IIM A team very diplomatically answered the question, saying they would consider more of soft skills than technical abilities for a CEO as he would have already proved his abilities in the initial stages of his career. While for a fresh graduate they would consider more of technical skills than soft skills.
Also, IIM A had mentioned that had it not been Dr Manmohan Singh’s technical abilities India would have not grown to such a high level. Quoting this, the judge asked the team how they would then clarify their statement considering the popularity and success of P V Narasimha Rao in the political set-up. The team replied saying that they would say that P V Narasimha Rao was successful at the front end because it was Dr Manmohan Singh’s technical skills working at the back end.
Commenting on the final Q and A session Harsha said that he felt that the finals were much more matured and of higher level compared to semi-finals. Both the teams received huge response from the audience, not to forget the host team had much more support from the audience but it was the team IIM A that could finally make it.
Later in the evening it was time for Alumni quiz competition and as usual Harsha’s humor hormones were active again. One of the questions involved recognizing an image. And all contestants couldn’t make out what was it from the place where they were standing. It was funny to see each of them coming out one by one to check the image and Harsha moving in various directions to clear the space for them.
IIFT alumni Saurabh Goel and FMS alumni Rakesh Taklikar were the winners of the alumni quiz competition.
Commenting on what made them to the national finals of Acumen2007; Vinamra Srivastava of IIM A said “It was complete team effort. Well structured and distributed between us (he and Mohit Sadani). It was decided who would speak on technical foundation and who on decision making factors. I feel it was more of an impact full start and end that worked for us.” While Souvik Basu of NMIMS said, “We keep on attending various quiz competitions and follow quiz blogs but what helped us the most was the number of internal quiz and debate competitions happening at NMIMS.”