Six teams from top B-schools across India to compete for title of BusinessLine CXO title
The stage is set for the finals of the BLoC Boardroom Challenge for the BusinessLine CXO of the year.
Presented by apparel brand Indian Terrain, the grand finale, to be held on September 11 at Chennai’s Radisson Blu, will see top teams from B-schools in Chennai, Coimbatore, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi battle it out for the coveted CXO title.
The competing teams are from IIM Ahmedabad (Mumbai round), PSG Institute of Management (Coimbatore), SIBM (Bengaluru), LIBA (Chennai), ISB (Hyderabad) and IIT Delhi’s Department of Management Studies (Delhi).
The online preliminary round saw around 1,600 three-to-five-member teams across the six cities, from all the top B-schools, including the IIMs. Entries were also received from B-schools in cities such as Visakhapatnam, Guwahati, Indore and many more.
Teams from each designated city tackled a case outlined by BLoC and presented to a jury comprising industry leaders and academics. Senior corporate leaders participated as jury members in each city to assess the best teams.
The semi-finals were staged in the campuses of various top B-schools. The Chennai semi-finals were held at LIBA; in Bengaluru at XIME; in Mumbai at SPJIMR; Delhi at BIMTECH; in Coimbatore at PSG School of Management while the Hyderabad leg was held at The Hindu office.
In the finals, the contestants will again be tackling a company-specific case study. The cases have been written by Vishwadeep Kuila, an IIM-A alumnus who runs Chennai-based branding consultancy Brand Vectors. In the preliminary round, the online psychometric test was prepared by S Sivakumar, an executive coach.
Why the contest?The corner office, presentations, discussions, data analysis, ideation, problem-solving, trouble-shooting, team-building — this is the daily life of most CXOs. The contest aims to put B-schoolers in the shoes of a CXO for a day and tackle a challenging business problem.
Their objective is to solve it with fellow board members, compete with other equally capable teams and come out on top as a winner. For the finals the jury comprises Vishwadeep Kuila, Charath Narasimhan, CEO, Indian Terrain, and Suresh Srinivasan, Associate Professor, Strategy, Great Lakes Institute of Management.