A total of 12 teams – four each for the b-school quiz, b-school debate and alumni quiz – drawing from the best talent of India’s top MBA programs reached Mumbai on December 15 for the Acumen finals. The names of the b-schools itself – IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Calcutta, IIM Bangalore, SIBM Pune, IIFT Delhi, Narsee Monjee Mumbai – should give you an indication of the quality of people in the fray. These teams had beaten a total of more than 50 other b-schools in their regions to deserve a place in the finals.

The Ballroom at the ITC Grand Central Sheraton Hotel in Mumbai, the venue of Acumen 2007 finals was packed right from the beginning. The first event being the B-school Debate National semi-finals, teams from IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Calcutta, IIFT Delhi and IIM Bangalore took positions on the stage while debate judges Praveen Chakravarty, COO of BNP Paribas, Sumant Sinha, CEO of Aditya Birla Retail and R Sridharan, Managing Editor of Business Today put their notepads and scoresheets on alert.

The first debate semi-final between IIFT Delhi’s Arka Bhattacharya and Anchal Gupta and IIM Ahmedabad’s Mohit Sadani and Vinamra Shrivastava turned out to be a battlefield of numbers and statistics. Not surprising, given that the topic was ‘India’s demographic dividend is marketing hype’. In the three minutes that each team member received, they used data from UNDP indices, Goldman Sachs reports and census figures to put their point across. The research put in by each contestant was simply dazzling. The IIFT team argued that although the demographic profile of India made for good potential, it was of no use because there was no concrete plan to tap it. Until the dismal state of education was tamed, the excitement about the demographic dividend was hype, they said.

In defence, the IIM Ahmedabad team highlighted that although things were not perfect, the presence of a large young workforce pool in India was a major factor behind the success of the IT and BPO industries and was evidence that the demographic dividend of India was not mere hype. A heated round of questioning among the team and by the judges followed, leaving everyone including the audience more enlightened.

“IIM Calcutta, you like being on the left side of the stage as usual, so it must be a good start for you,” said Harsha as the IIM Calcutta and IIM Bangalore teams took their positions on stage for the second leg of the debate semi-finals. The debate on whether India Inc was doing enough for women centered around rather predictable arguments. Sahil Barua and Sandeep Das from IIM Bangalore while supporting the motion asserted that the last few years had seen Indian women take up leadership positions in places like Pepsi, HSBC Bank and ICICI Bank, which was a good sign that Indian workplaces were becoming open to women executing key roles. The IIM Calcutta team comprising Arzi Adbi and Navin Ibhrampurkar disagreed to the motion, saying that Pepsi and ICICI were very special instances and were not representative of a positive change in India. Large scale and manufacturing industries which formed the bulk of India Inc was still a male dominated place and little was being to elevate women there, they argued.

The shape of the debate finals was announced soon after the lunch break, IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta being the semi-final winners.

The alumni quiz followed next. Avid quizzers during their college days, the Acumen alumni quiz allows MBA graduates from Indian b-schools to get back on to the scene. This time, the winning team comprised Rabi Sankar Saha, working with Bharat Petroleum and alumnus of Delhi School of Economics and Jayashree Mohanka, working with Eveready and alumnus of IIM Calcutta.

They beat the rest of the teams with ease, finishing with 135 points over the first rummers up who ended at 115 points.

After a short tea break came the debate with the highest stakes. The national final round of Acumen 2007 b-school debate between IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta was fought on ‘India Inc’s Business Leaders Should Take over the Political Leadership’.

IIM Ahmedabad speaking for the motion gave examples of Civil Aviation Minister Prafull Patel and how he had brought a major turnaround in the way airlines and airports functioned. The IIM Calcutta team opposed the motion arguing with the example that the UB Group Chairman Vijay Mallya who was a Member of Parliament from Karnataka could not express his opinion on the Cauvery dispute because he might lose the market for his company’s spirit products in Karnataka and Tami Nadu. Business and politics had a conflict of interest, they reasoned.

As the question and answer session followed, the IIM Calcutta team evolved their argument saying that businessmen should be on advisory roles in the government but not pur political roles.

Harsha Bhogle, while moderating the debate observed how the level of the debates rose clearly with the transition from regional rounds to the semi-finals and national finals. IIM Calcutta was adjudged the absolute winners of Acumen 2007 debate.

The last and the most-awaited event of the day, the b-school quiz finals followed next.

Click here to download Acumen regional rounds quiz questions

The teams from IIM Kozhikode, IMT Ghaziabad, XLRI Jamshedpur and Narsee Monjee Mumbai all had comfortable starts with 10, 30, 10 and 20 points respectively after the first round. The nearly neck-to-neck fight continued all through the event and the Narsee Monjee team finally won with a lead of only 5 points to IMT Ghaziabad’s 85 points.

The surprise of the evening however was the sudden appearance of John Abraham as the evening’s chief guest. Not many people know that John Abraham before becoming an actor was a qualified MBA graduate and the trivia surprised many people.

John Abraham with the winning quiz team from NMIMS

“I did not know the answer to any of the questions in the quiz. I thought that maybe I would know something from the round on the Retail Industry, but there too the questions were too tough for me. I feel humbled by the level of intelligence among the participating teams,” John said while distributing the prizes.