Mahindra War Room

This is an innovative contest designed by Mahindra group, held every year. I happened to attend as an invitee this year at a Mumbai hotel. A lot of work had gone into designing the 'set', and CNBC might be telecasting it sometime, as they were the media partners.

Mahindra group identified sectors in which it operates, like tractors, and sectors in which it wants to enter, like dairy, and gave these themes as cases for student teams to analyse and make recommendations on. As Anand Mahindra said in his opening session, he gets to pick the best brains in the country for his group- for free!

It was an entertaining and illuminating set of presentations by students from various B schools. Finally FMS Delhi won and SP Jain were the runners up, from among seven teams. But many other presentations were equally good.

A sidelight for me was that I met a former student of IIM Kozhikode who now works for the Mahindra group. I also met a friend and former colleague who now heads a new IIM, and the new director of IIM Shillong.