CNBC-TV18 announces winners of Lessons in Marketing Excellence

IIM Ahmedabad wins most prestigious competitions in India's business school circuit.

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | March 23, 2011

IIM Ahmedabad overcame IIM Kozhikode in a hard fought final of 'Lessons in Marketing Excellence' (L.I.M.E), a case study challenge to find India's brightest and best young marketers. L.I.M.E. is one of the most prestigious competitions in India's business school circuit.

The case was offered by, the Olympic Gold Quest. With London Olympics 2012 approaching, the Olympic Gold Quest is supporting handpicked athletes with their mission to win India gold medals. The teams from IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Kozhikode chalked up the plan to mobilize mass support and funding. IIM Ahmedabad won 'Lessons in Marketing Excellence – Season 2' by a small margin. Both team cases not only reflected in-depth research and understanding of the challenge but also provided focused and relevant solutions that were cost effective and easily implementable.

The jury who selected the winners were the heavy hitters of India's marketing fraternity – Geet Sethi-Billiards Maestro & Director Olympic Gold Quest Viren Rasquinha, Former captain of Indian Hockey Team & COO, Olympic Gold Quest; Rama Bijapurkar, an author and a thought leader on market strategy and consumer behaviour in India, Piyush Pandey, Chairman, O&M Jaideep Sahni, Screenwriter of Chak De India; Senthil Chengalvarayan, President & Editorial Director – Business Media, CNBC-TV18; Shrijeet Mishra, Executive Director–Foods, HUL and Gopal Vittal, Executive Director-Home & personal care, HUL.

Ajay Maken, Minister of State for Sports and Youth Affairs could not attend the event due to parliamentary commitments however sent a message, “HUL and CNBC-TV18 endeavor, Lessons in Marketing Excellence is an innovative way to get India's brightest young people to give their inputs on issues and themes of National interest”.

Commenting on the Olympic Gold Quest, Ajay Maken said, “The Olympic Gold Quest is doing great work, but unfortunately corporates are willing to only help individual athletes but not sports federations and infrastructure”. He further added, “National Sports Federations have not been able to create credibility for themselves for corporates to come forward and help in any way. These federations should be more professional in their functioning, for corporates to be more forthcoming to help the cause of sports as a whole rather than an individual athlete”.

Speaking at the occasion Anuradha Sengupta, Features Editor, CNBC-TV18 said “Lessons in Marketing Excellence was launched last year and in less than 12 months it has become one of the most prestigious competitions for Business Schools. It has a prestigious jury who has played an important role at every stage of the competition and has been very critical and looked for in-depth research and solutions. Keeping up with the tradition, this year too, the finale case study goes beyond business to give the students to deal with a case that is of interest and importance to India. ”

Commenting on the initiative, Nitin Paranjpe, CEO & MD, Hindustan Unilever said, “We wanted to provide a platform for some of the brightest minds in the country, to engage in debate on real business issues and at some stage get an opportunity to address issues of massive importance. With LIME we got the opportunity to nurture and showcase some of the finest talent in this country. The combination of the experience and expertise of HUL, coupled with the freshness of perspective that these young minds bring in, has paved way for new thoughts, new insights and new solutions to problems which may have not been solved in the past.”

On attending the event, Prof. Renuka Kamath, Head - Marketing Deptt., S P Jain Institute of Management and Research said, “This is one competition that goes much beyond the usual B-School spirit, especially in the Finals. Both Season1 and Season2 finals of LIME have been real issues and ones which are of national importance. This is what makes LIME so special.”

In attendance top corporate honchos including the likes of Sam Balsara, Pranesh Mishra, Ravikant Sabnavis, Manisha Lath Gupta amongst others were present at the event. The sports fraternity was also well represented by Geet Sethi, PT Usha, Ritwik Bhattacharya, Pankaj Advani, Sushil Kumar among others.

The winners Sashank Rajpurohit, Srikanteaswaran T K & Saurab Vivek Nair from IIM Ahmedabad have won themselves 1) A trip to London 2) An international internship at Vietnam and 3) A pre-placement interview with HUL

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