The eastern part of India is not particularly the hotbed of business education, the number of b-schools here being being much lesser than those in the rest of India. However, all that seems to change every year at the Aditya-Birla Group and Business Today’s b-school quiz and debate event Acumen 2007. The fever of
excitement at IIM Calcutta, the yearly venue remains as high as that in the other regional Acumen rounds.

The East zonal round, the last of Acumen 2007’s regionals took place on Friday and Saturday with b-school teams from Kolkata, Bhubhaneswar, Jamshedpur and Kharaghpur pouring into the IIM Calcutta campus for the biggest yearly b-school challenge in this part of the world.

Friday, the day of preliminary rounds saw the written stage of the quiz rounds yielding XLRI Jamshedpur, IISWBM Kolkata, IIM Calcutta and IIFT Kolkata as the zonal finalists. The elimination rounds in the debate competition resulted in IIM Calcutta, Praxis Business School Kolkata, IISWBM Kolkata and XIM Bhubhaneswar reaching the semi-finals.

While IIM Calcutta and Praxis Business School Kolkata debated on ‘We have failed in building brand India’, IISWBM Kolkata and XIMB debated whether India should push for the ‘Asian Dollar’, the Euro equivalent for Asia. An interesting but at times heated round of debate sent IIM Calcutta’s Arzi Adbi and Naviin Ibhrampurkar and Praxis Business School’s Vinay Joshi and Saurabh Agarwal to the regional finals.

The topic for the finals debate, ‘Diversified conglomerates will have to break up to retain focus’, addressed the essential problem faced by Indian companies, of breaking up into smaller units or staying united in a single conglomerate as they diversify into vastly different product ranges.

While Adbi and Gupta from IIM Calcutta spoke in favor of the topic, stressing that staying together as a conglomerate helped subsidiaries to reuse the conglomerate’s revenue as fresh capital while if they went alone, their risks would increase. The team from Praxis on the other hand argued that being independent helped brands to set their own strategies without the legacy of a larger brand.

Event judges Amit Chincholkar, Group Head Compensation & Rewards, ABMCL and Manohar Samuel, Senior Vice President, Birla Cellulose finally awarded the East zone winner title to the IIM Calcutta team.

The quiz finals on Sunday hosted by none other than the charismatic Harsha Bhogle saw the teams going through seven gripping rounds spanning diverse subjects as business, politics, sports, technology, advertising and entertainment. The crowd was constantly kept at the edges of their seats with frequent audience questions and prizes. Eventually, the XLRI Team comprising Raghu Reddy and Shrikant N won.

The alumni quiz had equally engaging moments and the winners 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 won the event with ease.

Click here to download Acumen 2007 regional round questions

The winning teams will now face the other regional winners from North, South and West at the Acumen 2007 national finals on December 15, 2007 at Mumbai.