Usher '12

SIMSREE expanded its horizon and added a new feather to its hat with the successful execution of USHER’12 on October 19, 2012. The Junior Corporate Relations Committee stretched its wings and took USHER’12 to a new echelon making it a National Intercollegiate Management Event. USHER was aptly nucleated by various management events like The Hunting Spree, Ad-Diction, Sell it @ SIMSREE and the pinnacle was marked by a Panel Discussion on ‘Scaling new heights in Public Private Partnership’. SIMSREE witnessed the budding managers of India thinking out of box and channelizing their management knowledge to compete for the top prize. The sponsors for the event included Essel World, Bank of Maharashtra, Akbarallys and Markiv’s Restaurant.

After the inauguration, this grand day was started with a challenging competition of Hunting Spree where teams were given a company in advance and had to rack their brains to come up with potential Mergers & Acquisition ideas for that company. The judges of this event were Mr. Vikrant Narang, Director- Investment Banking at Barclays Capital and Mr. Chandrasekharam Tatapudy, a Business Strategy Consultant who is the Co-founder and CEO of Yasham P2D Lifesciences Pvt. Ltd. The shortlisted teams came up with very unique acquisition prospects of both Public and Private sector companies and included participants from institutes like Prin. L. N. Welingkar Institute of Management, Great Lakes Institute of Management, NMIMS and our very own SIMSREE. The teams supported their idea with sound financial, technical and economic analyses and outlined the entire timeline of events that would happen during and post the merger of the two companies. The winning idea was the acquisition of the company Amrutanjan by Dabur which was presented by the team High Betas from NMIMS, Mumbai. Other ideas included acquisitions of Prizm Payments by TATA Communications, Yebhi.com by Flipkart and Aleris International Inc. by Vedanta Resources Plc. 

After a sagacious financial event, it was time for the right half of the brain to shine and our marketing knowledge was put to the test by Ad-diction, an ad-centric event which saw an even contest between nine teams from across the country. The preliminary round Ad-entify got the participants and the audience to walk down memory lane and identify all those nostalgic advertisements that we grew up with. The final round saw the five finalists putting concerted efforts for launching a product along with its marketing mix, envisaging a leading apparel brand launching tyres, or a leading plastic manufacturer entering the watch market. Startling and conspicuous concepts came forth, which even impressed the judge Mr. Gagan Gupta, Product Head at Tata Motors. The team that pocketed the 1^st prize was Sparta from SIMSREE while Aetos Dios from SIES, Navi Mumbai bagged the Runners up position.

Selling, convincing and negotiating skills were then put to the test with the concluding competition, Sell it @ SIMSREE.  A unique competition that required each team to manufacture a product made out of only paper or aluminum foil within a time span of just 30 minutes. The cinque rival teams were Team Mavericks - KJ Somaiya, Team Aetos Dios - SIES, Team Zealots - SIMSREE, Team Three Musketeers - XIMR and Team Rockstars - SIMSREE. The 30 minutes of brain racking brought spectacular products to life, ranging from personalized gifting products & accessories, paper trays and mobile phone holders to Tequila shot glasses and flower bouquets. After the demonstration of their product, each team was given an opportunity to present the various aspects that they would follow to promote, target and sell their products and their expected revenue. The judges Mr. Heramb Ranade, Chief Marketing Officer at Tikona Digital Networks Pvt. Ltd. and Mr. Hrishikesh C. Rumde, respected alumni and Founder/Promoter, Zelos n Zest & 3 Monkeez, were very impressed to see the spectacular & innovative ideas which were on show. The phenomenal talent of team Aetos Dios won the hearts of not just the audience but also the judges and came out as winners for the viewer’s choice award as well as the jury award with their concept of mobile bag holder. This event brought the entrepreneurial abilities of various students and encouraged them to expand their ideas into the market.

The exciting and fun filled competitions were followed by a very enlightening panel discussion on the topic, ‘Scaling new heights in Public Private Partnership’. Eminent personalities like Mr. Bhupen Dalal, Chairman at Foods and Inns Ltd., Mr. Narayan Hariharan, President of Corporate affairs at Adani Enterprises, Mr. Kapil Mehra, Associate Director at Kyori Oremin Ltd., Mr. Kalyan Prasath, Sr. Vice President at ICICI Prudential AMC Ltd., Mr. Bhaskar Bhattacharya, Associate Vice President of ABG Cement Ltd. were the part of the panel and Mr. Darryl Cabral, Director at HR Total Solutions was the moderator of the discussion. The discussion was based on the pros and cons of Private Public Partnership and how it can shape the future development of the economy. The discussion covered topics from myriad sectors such as aviation, coal, power and infrastructure. All the panelists agreed that Public Private Partnership is necessary for cost effectiveness, quality and growth of the economy.

All in all, Usher 2012, which could not have been possible without the efforts of the Corporate Relations Committee, was a huge success and was admired by one and all.