Network Past Issues

The ripple that made waves

Ekta Rawat and Akil Nayak R from PRM 38 make for a formidable duo. Team Ripple, as they are known in B-schools across the country now, stormed some of the best management institutes and aced their inter-school competitions. In a freewheeling chat with Shivansh Mishra they opened up about their team, its dynamics, and their advice for PRM 39.

Q: What are your academic backgrounds and how did you guys decide to team up?

Ekta: Both of us are fresh graduates and didn’t have any work experience prior to coming to IRMA. I’m a History Hons. Graduate from Delhi University and Akil is a graduate in Mathematics from Loyola College, Chennai.

Akil: As it happens every year for so many aspirants, we first interacted on social media during the admissions process.

Ekta: We both hit it off instantly because we wanted to do something beyond the classrooms. We wanted to go the extra mile to learn and make the most of the opportunities and the platform that IRMA’s PGDRM provides. Once we were inside the campus we started participating in college activities together and as soon as we understood that we worked very well as a team we started applying to these B-school competitions.

Q: How did the PGDRM itself help you?

Akil: The course is very rigorous. And it remains so throughout the year. So, when we started participating in and coordinating events in the campus itself through various student clubs we learnt how to make the best use of our time and efforts.

Ekta: We discovered that it was best when we were on the same plane regarding our abilities in terms of handling pressure and juggling classroom assignments while identifying how best a particular competition fitted into our skills-sets. Since we gain a lot of knowledge on agriculture and allied sectors, we gained an upper hand in competitions involving cases around these topics.

Q: What kind of team rapport do you share in terms of the skills-sets just mentioned?

Ekta: Most of the time, when it comes to analytics or involves crunching numbers, Akil does the handling owing to his background in Mathematics.

Akil: Hardcore marketing principles and concepts are handled by her. The most important thing for us, though, is that we are completely prepared at every step of the competition. Starting from the application stage itself we try to read as much as possible about the cases involved. It has happened that we encountered cases where the subject demanded application of theories weren’t yet taught to us. That is the time we approach our faculty members.

Ekta: I would specially like to mention Prof. Preeti Priya who helped us immensely in understanding the frameworks of crisis management for a case that had not been covered in our classroom terms by then.

Q: Did the subjects you had covered during or before participating in the competitions help to some extent?

Akil: For a competition that involved a lot of clarity on data analytics, we were fortunate to have studied Production and Operations Management (POM) and Operations Research (OR) in Term-II. The theories helped us immensely in presenting an operational plan.

Ekta: In our current Term-IV, I am studying a course on Brand Management because of which we decided to apply to the El Politico organized by IIM Bangalore. It involved designing the branding strategy for a political party for the 2019 elections. We ended up as finalists there.

Q: Please take the readers through your journey as Team Ripple in the past year.

Ekta: We started in January with IIM Rohtak’s Prodyogiki, a Data Analytics competition that we had won after presenting a case study on the expansion strategy of a company in milk and milk products. We were runners-up in a marketing case study competition called Marketing Crusader organized by IIM Nagpur. We formulated a Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy for a brand of electric car and competed against more than 1000 registered teams.

Akil: In February we won two very different competitions at IMI, New Delhi. For Excalibur, we came up with a marketing strategy for addressing issues related to brand image and the falling share prices of a low cost airline. We had to plan out an Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) for the same. Expressions presented a unique opportunity because we went through different rounds during an impersonation story completion competition where spontaneity and ease with words was tested. El Politico happened this August.

Q: Which has been the most challenging competition for you yet?

Ekta: All the competitions have been very challenging because of the participating teams. They comprise students from some of the best B-Schools of the country but if we were to choose one, it would be Expressions at IMI, New Delhi. It was nothing like what we had learnt before. The rules were communicated on-the-spot and it tested how well we could think on our feet. Because we share a great rapport we were able to decide quickly who would present and who would field questions from the judges and the other participants.

Q: What would be your advice to PRM 39 going forward?

Ekta: We believe the most important part of building a team is identifying the right people. Our academic calendar is very challenging and so it is even more important to have people who are ready to go that extra mile. We have often worked simultaneously on our academic projects and competition submissions because we understand the importance of both.

Akil: One other important thing to remember is that one must never lose heart. During the first year itself, we would send out entries to B-school challenges but those would invariably be rejected. So, we decided to be better prepared for the submissions and ended up reading a lot about the competitions and the areas of interest they aligned with. While it was hectic in the beginning this exercise started yielding results soon. Even now, we get rejected a lot but the key is to apply on a regular basis and keep improving with each application.

Q: What’s next for Team Ripple?

Akil: Since Term-IV is getting over and since we will soon be off for our MTS, we decided to take a pause and just focus on one competition. We will be collaborating with another batch-mate of ours, Vijaya, on it and hopefully bring home the top prize for IRMA.

We wish Team Ripple best of luck for all their future endeavours.