BNP Paribas, VP & Advisory Desk head present at NITIEas Prerana

Day 2 Sizzled with 3 contests.

Contest 1 – The Fin Game was a simulation of day trading done by teams to handle their stock by investing real-time on the NSE/BSE listed companies. Based on fluctuations of the market, the value of their portfolio quivered. Continuing for 5 hours, the Fin Game ran in conjunction with the other two contests.

Contest 2 – The Shop required the teams to work as team players in a “trading-market” scenario requiring efficient teamwork and decision-making. The tasks were not limited just around trading, bidding and dealing but quick fire tactical decisions.

Contest 3 – The Green Product Design exacting creative skills had the contestants presenting innovative product designs for specified products with a twist – making commercially feasible and environment friendly products.

For each event the team earned Internal Trading Rupees or ITRs that impacted the performance in each event.

The second day opened on the wonderful and sunny morning in the NITIE Lawns and with instructions from the organizers and inspiration from Dr T Prasad, the untiring mind behind Mandi. The event kicked off with a sales stint by each team on the second day of Prerana. Each team was given a fixed inventory of educational toys made by an NGO called Navnirmiti, to go out and sell in the streets and markets of Mumbai. The participating teams were asked to part with their money and handed a traveling allowance. With a limited time-period of 5 hours and with overseers from the organizing committee keeping a check, the sales and convincing prowess of the teams were tested in the place where it matters the most – the market, or colloquially the Mandi.

“B-Sultans” has been the grandest event at NITIE’s Annual inters B-school festival Prerana 2006.

Prerana 2006 B-Sultans presented an unparallel arena for the clash of titans from India’s premier B Schools. Devoid of fuzzy rankings or heralded pedigree 6 teams from different B-Schools slugged it out against each other in 5 variegated contests. These teams qualified from a stringent sieve of a multifarious case competition.

The participants were handed a Case Study before their arrival to NITIE, which involved research on the Intellectual Arbitrage. It tested the participants on conceptual clarity, understanding of business environment and approach towards problem solving in IT Business.

On day 3 of Prerna the case study solution presented by each group was judged by eminent panelists from Cognizant Technology Solution. The participants had done an in-depth study on current trends in the Software Industry and they talked at length about niche strengths and improvement areas for various Indian companies and the multinational firms in India. The conclusion drawn by most teams hovered around the fact that Labour Arbitrage and Intellectual Arbitrage should go hand in hand for ensuring success of software firms and they should capitalize on core strengths on the basis of geography, language know-how and expertise gained in one particular technology or business domain.

This final round saw the 6 teams compete to decide the last team standing.. the ultimate managers.. the Sultans of Business!

The jury expressed extreme satisfaction at the exploits and results of the six teams and finally the team from XLRI – NIRMAAN was adjudged the B – Sultans

Invest

Conceptualised in 2005, Invest strives to promote excellence by encouraging management students interested in equity research and security markets as a career option, to display their potential to eminent professionals of the industry and gain new insights and ideas for further learning.

In the preliminary round of Invest 2006, participants from all over India were invited to submit an equity research report recommending a stock, out of the enlisted 200 stocks, elucidating Long Term Investment Strategy. Out of these, the 5 top entries were selected for the finals.

The jury included some renowned people like,

K. Ramachandran – Senior Vice-President, Head – Advisory Desk, BNP Paribas
T. Balasubramanian – AVP, Adventity
Prof K.V.S. Narayan Rao – NITIE

The jury gave their feedback about the performance of the participants and their opinion on “the current valuation of the stock market. Is the valuation overheated or are we observing a fundamentally correct growth” before the results were announced.

Winners – NITIE – Sameer & Vivek
Runners up – XLRI – Puneet & Apoorv

Finding out the best quizzing brains at NITIE’ Prerana 2006.

The Prerana Business Quiz truly held its reputation as one of the best events, and served as the best ending to these enthralling three days. It brought out the best in the participants, and proved that it takes more than General Knowledge to be a brilliant quizzer.
The quizmaster was none other than Gautam Bhimani of ESPN fame, and having Gautam host the show was the icing on the cake.

There was a preliminary elimination round in the afternoon, which was a written one. For the semi- final rounds, six teams of corporate and six teams of students had to be shortlisted. However, the preliminary rounds had led to a tiebreaker, where in the students category, 5 teams were placed in the same position, and one of them would make it to the finals as the sixth team. The Team from NMIMS, Govind and Shoubik cleared the tiebreaker, and became the sixth team.

Among the corporate, 2 teams had the same scores, and the team Accenture and Jay Water Thompson, comprising of Saurabh and Gururaj respectively, cleared the tiebreaker round to become the sixth team.

The finale was an interesting six round event, where all the teams gave their best. In between, there were Audience questions as well, with many prizes.
Finally, as the curtains came to a close, the corporate team from TCS won the third prize, second by the student team from IMT Ghaziabad, and the first prize by the corporate team from Deutshe Bank and Sun Micro systems. Mr. Bhimani was given a memento by our honorable director, Dr. S.D. Awale.

Thus, came an end to this year’s Prerana, truly a memorable event in many ways.