E-cell organized team building competition

New Delhi, May 9, 2022: The team of students from Plaksha University, one of India’s largest collective philanthropy efforts to build a tech university for the future, was adjudged the winner in a national-level team building competition conducted by IIT Bombay. The competition involved the mock hiring of C-level executives for fictional start-ups with specific business challenges.

Over 120 teams from leading higher educational institutions, including IISER and IITs from across the country participated in the competition, titled, ‘Bid and Build’. The competition was organised between February 2-3, 2022, by E-Cell, the entrepreneurship development wing, run by the students of IIT Bombay. The event was a part of E-Summit 22, an annual entrepreneurship summit. The teams conducted mock bidding and filled the posts of Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, and Human Resource Officer, for their fictional start-up to excel in given business contexts.

The student members of the university’s winning team comprised: Chandan Yadav from Uttar Pradesh, Shreyas Kannan from Bangalore, and Rushiraj Gadhvi from Ahmedabad. The students had to line up the leadership team for their tech start-up, which was into building a fashion app that would enable customers to try clothes virtually on their mobile devices. Among the high-profile members of the executive team of the fictional start-up was Mr Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, a renowned investor (hired for the CFO position), and Mr. Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder of Ola Cabs, as CMO.

Commenting about his students winning the competition, Prof. Rudra Pratap, the Founding Vice Chancellor of Plaksha University (former Deputy Director of Indian Institute of Science) said, “Putting together a great team is crucial for the success of any start-up. We are glad that our students proved their mettle in this national-level competition demonstrating their business acumen and insights into hiring decisions to achieve specific business goals. The students were able to analyse the performance and the calibre of real- world c-suite executives of Global Inc, and to conduct mock bidding to hire them. We congratulate our students for achieving this feat. We are confident that the experience they gained while participating in the competition will be valuable to them in future.”

Bid and Build competition had several rounds. In the first round, they were given 3 scenarios of a fictional country and a fixed budget of Rs 1 crore to invest in three sectors, agriculture, manufacturing and IT. Before the second round, the participating teams were given different start-up scenarios and a roster of almost 50 C-level executives from the real world. With a rating of 1 to 5 on their managerial, financial, technical, communication and team skills, up for bidding. The teams had to choose their preferred CXO and fill the posts of CEO, CFO, CTO, CMO and HR, in their fictional start up and bid within the provided budget (Rs 150 lakh). The team learnt to compromise on the number one choice in many a scenario and learnt valuable lessons in bidding strategy and the requirements to head the post of a specific company.

About Plaksha University

Founded by a global community of 100+ technology and business leaders, Plaksha envisions to reimagine technology education and research for India and the world. With strong partnerships with UC Berkeley, Purdue, UC San Diego, IIT Kanpur, and IISc Bangalore, Plaksha aims to nurture and empower a generation of catalytic leaders and create an ecosystem of research and innovation. The university collapses the traditional boundaries of engineering and promotes interdisciplinary learning by combining technology, design and entrepreneurship.

Plaksha is guided by an eminent academic board including Dr. Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering, University of Pennsylvania; Venkatesh Narayanamurthi, former Dean of Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Sriram Rajamani, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India Julia Ross, Dean of Engineering, Virginia Tech; Krishna Palepu, Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; Sanjay Sarma, Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MIT; and business leaders such as Neeraj Aggarwal, Chairman – Asia Pacific, BCG; Hitesh Oberoi, Co-promoter & CEO, Info Edge (Naukri.com); Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder, Fractal Analytics; Manas Fuloria, Co- Founder, Nagarro; Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises; Navin Chaddha, Managing Director, Mayfield Fund; Sujeet Kumar, Co-founder, Udaan.com; Dalip Pathak, Special Limited Partner, Warburg Pincus LLC; CP Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra; Pramod Bhasin, Chairman, Clix Capital among others. Corporate donors include companies like Bharti Foundation, Havells, HT Parekh Foundation, Mphasis, Axis Bank and Motilal Oswal. The global community of business leaders who founded Plaksha can be seen here.