Simerations a big hit with management students

Our Management Bureau in Mumbai

The marketing case study competition was a highlight at ‘Simerations’—the two-day inter-collegiate management festival that culminated at Sydenham Institute of Management Studies & Research & Entrepreneurship Education (Simsree). The event had a pot pourri of cultural, management, literary and informal events. The festival was organised by India Inc, a weekly supplement of The Financial Express that offers an enriched insight about Indian business and Indians in business.

The endless rounds of power point presentations, demanding volley of queries from panelists and a brainstorming/debating round conducted by the student audience, who were peering over Philip Kotler to prove the presenters wrong, gave the event a lively atmosphere.

The case study in question: A tyre brand ‘Bandag’ from a Malaysian corporate, Semang. The poser for the competitors was to create an integrated brand building plan for a tyre business that was plateauing with competition and plummeting in marketshare.

Some of the participating management institutions included the South Indian Education Society, Sion (Sies), Rizvi, the Sydenham Institute of Management Studies and Research and Entrepreneurship Education and the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, among others.

“Socialists believe that making profit is a sin. But we believe that the biggest sin is to make a loss,” came a pointer from one of the
competitors from Sydenham, who bagged the first prize.

While Simsree bagged the first prize, Sies stood second in the case study round. Along with nostalgic reminiscences of their management education days, the panelists did have certain remarks: “Brand building does not function as an isolated variable from the prescribed lessons in marketing and management. There are macro economic factors like the WTC attacks, the rubber crisis in Malaysia and several other challenges that the new age marketing managers have to be sensitised about before strategising a revenue generating marketing model.” This remark came from one of the judges—from Godrej & Boyce.