IIM Raipur Launches Special Issue of Strive on Retail

On 11^th March 2012, the Operations and Supply Chain Club of IIM Raipur, OPEP, launched the second issue of its magazine Strive. This issue of Strive focuses on the Retail Sector, an area which has been in the headlines for quite some time and needs immediate attention. The Magazine was launched by Prof. B S Sahay, the Director of IIM Raipur, along with Mr. Satyan Mishra, Co-Founder & MD, Drishtee Foundation and Mr. Bahadur Ali, MD, IB Group. Prof. Sahay lauded the efforts of the club in bringing together the various aspects of and challenges in the retail sector in a special issue of the magazine.



From Left : Akshay Aggarwal, Rohit Bhagat (Editor, Strive) , Mr. Bahadur Ali (MD, IBGroup), Mr. Satyan Mishra (MD, Drishtee Foundation) , Prof. B.S. Sahay (Director, IIM Raipur) , Anshu Katiyar and Nitin Kuraien at the Launch.



Just as the inaugural issue, this issue of Strive has also been launched in a Tablet Friendly version which helps it to be viewed easily on smartphones and tablets. The magazine was launched on the second day of Enspirit 2012, the inaugural edition of the Entrepreneurship Summit of IIM Raipur. Other eminent personalities who graced the occasion were Mr. Abhishek Sinha, CEO, EKO India Financial Services, Mr. Nirmal Kumar, Founder, Nirmal Group, Mr. Snehanand Sinha, Advisor to Social Businesses, Mr. Phanindra Sama, CEO, Redbus, Mr. Rustam Sengupta, CEO, BOOND and Mrs. Rashmi Bansal, the well-known Author & Entrepreneur.

Speaking on this occasion the Editor of Magazine and a Second year student, Rohit Bhagat, highlighted the salient features of the magazine. The second issue of Strive contains articles from both academia and the industry with Companies like Jubilant Foodworks (formerly Domino’s

Pizza India Ltd.) and Technopak contributing articles for the magazine. The magazine features an exclusive interview of Mr Arvind Singhal, CMD, Technopak. Other noted contributors include Mr Ajay Kaul, CEO, Jubilant Foodworks, Prof. Bhalender Singh, Prof. Omkar Prasad Vaidya and Prof. Naval Bajpai.

Students have written articles on the role played by Farmers and Middle-Men in the Supply Chain, emergence of E-Tailing in India, Retail in China, Book Review of “It Happened in India” and Success stories of Amul and Walmart. The local challenge discussed in this issue is the upcoming Logistics Hub in Raipur. In addition to the earlier column on Summer Internship Experience, two more columns have been added. Through the column of Gurumantra, some relevant technical terms would be explained. In this issue, the RFID technology has been explained in details. The other column is a debate, where students have presented contrasting views on “Should India allow FDI in Retail?”

Rohit thanked his team for the successful release of the special issue of Strive. The magazine will now be available for students of all B-schools across India and abroad and also for Retail Professionals in the industry. To access the magazine, please click here.

Equinox ’12 Graced by Xploryze

Xploryze, the case study competition organized by Abhijeet Srivastava and Vishal Singh, members of the OPEP club and PGP 2011-13 students, proved to be a huge success.

The case presented to the candidates, written by Abhijeet, raises questions regarding the ethical dilemmas in medical profession – whether doctors should work for charity or for profits. It also asks the candidates to prepare a strategy for building and successfully running a hospital, while providing some details about the founders. The case is given below. 

Case Study: Xploryze

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In the first round of the competition, students from all over the country were invited to form teams of two and submit a short presentation on their proposed solution for the case. The event was a phenomenal success as entries were received from IIM Bangalore, IIM Rohtak, IIM Indore, IIM Raipur, NITIE Mumbai and SP Jain to name a few. The best four entries were selected and the teams were invited to IIM Raipur campus to present their case analysis and solutions in the presence of a judging panel and the students participating in Equinox ‘12. The members of the panel were Dr. Manish Mattoo, an ISB Hyderabad alumnus and Director of Fortis Escorts Hospital and Prof. O. S. Vaidya, Faculty of Operations & Supply Chain Management, IIM Raipur.

The presentations by the finalists reflected very meticulous research and in-depth analysis of an otherwise alien field (medical) with respect to management students. Each presentation was followed by a rigorous Q&A session where, along with the judges, other participants and students too got involved in the discussions. The first position was bagged by Team Chanakyas from NITIE Mumbai.

The judges lauded the OPEP club and the organizers for the successful completion of the event, which attracted such wide participation.

The winning presentation by NITIE Mumbai is given below.

Xploryze Case Solution by NITIE

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Book Review Competition: The Toyota Way

Among the various exciting events in Equinox ’12, the OPEP club, on 6^th March, organized Critique, a book review competition for the international bestseller “The Toyota Way” authored by Dr. Jeffrey Liker. The participation was overwhelming as students from various reputed B-schools across the country sent their entries soon after the organizers invited them over a month back.

Among the many entries received, the best three were shortlisted and the students were invited to present their book reviews at IIM Raipur Campus in the presence of a judging panel and the students participating in Equinox ‘12. The members of the panel were Prof. O. S. Vaidya, Faculty of Operations & Supply Chain Management, IIM Raipur and Prof. Naval Bajpai, Faculty of Statistics and Business Research, IIM Raipur.

The finalists presented their understanding of and views about the wide and often less understood subject called “Lean Practices”. The basic fundamental ideas presented in the book were discussed at length. The final results of the competition are as follows:

• First Position – Akshay Agarwal, PGP 2011-2013
• Runners up – Harish Verma, PGP 2011-2013 and Mehul Bardia, PGP 2011-2013 (Jointly share runners up position)

The winning entry will be published in the forthcoming edition of Strive magazine. The book review presentations of Harish and Mehul are given below.

Book Review: The Toyota Way by Harish Verma

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Book Review: The Toyota Way by Mehul Bardia

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IIM Raipur Students Interact with Core Industries at National Expo - 3

The students of Indian Institute of Management Raipur had interactions aimed at knowledge-exchange with the entrepreneurs and representatives of the micro, small scale and medium scale enterprises (MSMEs) who participated in the National Expo 3. The expo was organized at Science College Ground in Raipur under the banner of Indore Infoline Pvt. Ltd. from 16^th December to 18^th December, 2011.

National Expo 3 is the largest industry exhibition in central India. Almost 200 companies from core sectors like steel, power, cement, mining, infrastructure, construction and automation participated in the event. The list includes Siemens Ltd., Wendt (India) Ltd., Doshion Ltd., Atlas Copco India Ltd. and many small scale and medium scale enterprises. Moreover, some foreign companies, mainly from China and Singapore, were also present. This exhibition provided them an opportunity to display their products and technology and to interact with potential customers. It also proved to be a very useful platform for some budding companies and new products as they got significant exposure.

The students of IIM Raipur took up this opportunity and attended the National Expo 3 with the sole intention of learning through interactions with the local industries. Chhattisgarh is well known for its Core Industries and we experienced it first-hand while talking to the representatives of the various start-ups who also were participating. Many of the students have some prior experience in the core sectors like steel, power, mining, construction etc. This further added to the quality and fruitfulness of the interactions as they could easily connect with the industry representatives and understand their problems and practices. We learnt about their technology, logistics, markets, competition and management practices. They also shared with us the problems that they confront while setting up or expanding business in Chhattisgarh as well as those that come up in day-to-day operations. The discussions then went on towards the possible solutions, where we tried to complement their experience with our classroom learning. Finally, we talked about the likely future scenario of industries in Chhattisgarh, and found that almost everyone seemed quite optimistic. We also explored opportunities for making the Expo a bigger success by researching into dimensions like Logistics, Layout, Customer Satisfaction, Branding etc.

In a nutshell, the National Expo 3 proved to be a great learning experience for IIM Raipur students and we look forward to participate in and contribute to such events in the future.

The writer of this article, Abhay Shankar is a PGP student of Indian Institute of Management, Raipur and has done his B. Tech (Chemical Engineering) from BIT Sindri. Prior to joining IIM Raipur, Abhay was working at Vedanta Aluminium Ltd. Abhay can be reached at pgp11001.abhay@iimraipur.ac.in