Confluence 2010 Press Release (Day 3)[/b]
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PANEL DISCUSSION: “Innovation and Inclusivity in the Social Sector” [/b]
The final day at Confluence 2010 at IIM Ahmedabad revolved around the theme of “Innovation and Inclusivity in the Social Sector”. The morning sessions were opened by Prof. Atanu Ghosh, a senior professor at IIM Ahmedabad who raised several important issues during his opening note.
The first speaker was Dr. Abhay Bang, Founder of SEARCH who has also been acclaimed by Time Magazine as a “Global Health Hero”. He spoke about his fight against infant mortality in India, where 2.1 million children die within the first month after birth every year. While looking at this issue, he did not look at conventional parameters such as hospitals per square kilometre or women per village, but rather asked a simple question, “How far can a mother walk on foot with a baby in her arms?” In the quest to find a solution to this problem, he then ensured that healthcare was provided within that distance. He spoke about the implementation of the solution which involved training one woman as a community health worker in every village. Thus, by his efforts, even in Maoist infested areas such as Gadchiroli, the infant mortality rate was brought down to 30 per 1,000 (the national average is 50). Dr Bang said, “As long as they have knowledge in their head, skill in their hands and compassion in their hearts, our trained women can turn village huts into ICUs.”
The next speaker was Prof. Raghunathan, Head of GMR Foundation who at one time was a professor at IIMA and is the former MD of ING Vysya. He talked about how corruption comes in the way of even the noblest causes sometimes. He spoke about various innovative ways to bypass bribe-demanding local politicians and municipalities. He concluded by saying that, “Confluence is very very special to me. There’s a reason I spent five hours on two flights yesterday to get here.”s
Dr. Smita Premchander, an IIMA alumna had one main message to give to the youth of today, “Do in your life what makes you feel good.” She added, “Only after you have acted should you speak”. Adding to what other speakers said, she stressed on the vital need to empower women. She also made the audience aware of the existence and issues faced by manual scavengers, bonded labourers, child labourers and social prostitutes.
Mr. Venkat Changavalli, an IIMA alumnus and CEO of EMRI spoke about how important it is to maintain your values and ethics in an increasingly corrupt world. He had lived all his life in the corporate sector until Satyam?s Ramalinga Raju and Andhra Pradesh?s former CM, Rajshekar Reddy approached him to be a part of a social initiative called EMRI. Mr Changavalli said, “While you spend the first 25 years of your life on yourself and the next 25 on your spouse and children, you should spend the remainder of your life giving back to society –for completeness.” With this rationale, he left his high paying corporate life and joined this sector and he encouraged the youth to do the same. He concluded by saying, “I never met a single politician or IAS officer for 28 years of corporate life –however, I see them on a daily basis now and contrary to common perception, most of them are very good people.”
PODIUM [/b]
The theme of Podium on Day 3 was “Innovations in society” and included presentations by students who tried to provide solutions to improve the living conditions of people, especially the marginalised who get ignored by the
markets and state. After the initial shortlisting, four teams had been selected from IIM Ahmedabad and SCMHRD Pune. The teams presented different ideas on the use of technology for precision farming, fund creation for different philanthropic causes etc. The winning team was SCMHRD which presented a business plan on the education sector that involved using interactive didactic games to teach pre-school children.
STATECRAFT [/b]
Day 3 also saw the exciting finale of „Statecraft?, IIMA?s very own Model United Nations. The delegates worked through the night to come with a draft resolution for the economic unification of Africa. This was put to vote and passed after a few amendments and some debate about the political and economic stability of African nations. Just as delegates were getting ready to debate on the next topic, the Chairs declared an emergency. The hypothetical crisis situation involved Libyan terrorists, weapons of Chinese manufacture, an attack on the US stock market and affected the interests of India and South Africa as well. Delegates had to come up with a joint statement to respond to the crisis. After some highly charged discussion interspersed with several humorous moments, the delegates came up with a final joint resolution that was put to vote and passed. At the end of a hard day?s work, the „Best Delegation? award went to the United States Delegation from NLIU Bhopal. In second place were the delegations of India and Libya from IIMA and MICA respectively. The winner of „Best Delegate? was the delegate of Vietnam from NLU Jodhpur.
CORPORATE COMBAT [/b]
Another event that saw high drama on Day 3 was Corporate Combat. After the teams finished their final two rounds of simulation, their response to a crisis situation was tested when they were made to interact with the press, government authorities and unions of workers regarding a corporate crisis. A team of actors from IIMA created a stressful situation for the teams by accusing their companies of corporate malpractices. After teams had recovered from this situation, they were told that they had to merge with another company and were asked to select a suitable company, come up with synergies and value their potential partner. Teams made a final presentation on this to Professor Ajay Pandey from the IIMA faculty. Successfully navigating through various corporate tangles, the team from IIM Lucknow was declared as the winner followed by IIM Bangalore in second place.
GREEN INITIATIVE – KRONOS [/b]
Charity begins at home and so does climate change! This was the basis for Green Initiative - an event conducted specifically for students of IIM Ahmedabad - to create sensitivity towards the environment within the campus, and to possibly find ways of improving energy utilization. Several interesting ideas came up in the event which ranged from putting segregated dustbins for different kinds of waste to saving water by rainwater harvesting. The winning team was from the Armed Forces Programme at IIMA and constituted of a Major and a Lieutenant Colonel. They presented several ideas including implementing drip irrigation in Louis Kahn Plaza in the night, re-use of printed papers, waterless flush etc.
RETAIL KING [/b]
Retail King, an event which simulated the entire distribution channel concluded today with two teams from IIMA emerging in the top two spots. Retail king saw 70 teams of 3 participating in the eliminations round which
consisted of a brand quiz of 25 brand trivia questions. The organizers selected 9 finalists of 3 members each. The 3 members of each team had to then don the hat of buyer, seller and middleman or wholesaler with each role having different objectives. The teams then engaged in buying and selling in an open market with every buyer and seller trying to maximize their objectives creating a real life simulation.
NESTLE CASE STUDY [/b]
Nestle Case Study was a unique case study competition where participating teams came up with new products in the Cafe mixes product category, identified the growth drivers and came up with a marketing strategy for the same. Out of a total of 176 entries, 5 were called to present their ideas in the final round. Out of the 5 teams that reached the finals, 2 were from IIM A, and 1 each from IIM B, SPJIMR and SDIMD-Mysore. The event witnessed comprehensive presentations, which were followed by a Judges Q&A session. Judges took special note of the fact that each team came up with a unique product mix, and were particularly impressed with the innovation of these mixes.
BRAND-SPOTTING [/b]
This event was organised in association with Infibeam, a company that provides IT solutions for retail. Participants were given a chance to test their knowledge in marketing and strategy. The preliminary round consisted of a brand quiz that involved the identification of brands and company logos. In the final round, the teams were given a case study which asked teams to come up with ways to use IT and mobile services in the retail sector. The students were given just two hours to come up with as many solutions as possible and make a presentation on the same. The judge, Mr. Siddharth Sreenivasan, Head of Strategy for Infibeam was highly impressed with the variety and quality of suggestions that were given which covered nearly all solutions offered by Infibeam. Reflecting on the level of participation he said "What we thought of in months, students thought of in two hours." The winners of the event were IIMA and in second place was a mixed team from IIMA and SPJIMR.
VALEDICTORY FUNCTION [/b]
The Chief Guest of the valedictory function was Kiran Bedi who spoke about the use of innovations in daily life. She gave examples of how she used innovative practises in her stint as an IPS officer, especially during the time she handled traffic management in Delhi Police and when was posted as Inspector General at Tihar Jail. She encouraged students to think different and to have the courage to take actions on their thoughts.
CONCLUSIVE REMARKS [/b]
Mr. Chaitanya Shravanth, Secretary, Confluence 2010 said, “We were extremely pleased to see the tremendous participation from both outside colleges and IIMA. The speaker sessions were very interactive and the workshops were well-received by the participants. Everything went smoothly and we were appreciated by the other colleges for conducting a well-managed event.”