Cognizance

CORPOSTRAT (CENTRE-STAGE)

Corpostrat, one of the few Centre Stage events of Cognizance 2010, is the flag ship event of the Department of Management Studies, IIT Roorkee. This is not just another B-Plan Contest that we are now used to seeing in almost every college event. This aims to get the best out of the contestants’ both idea wise and also tests their marketing, strategy and decision making skills.

Corpostrat invited ideas and abstracts to address the growing problem of the digital divide. As many as 70 entries were received of which 8 teams were selected to participate in the first round on 26^th March, 2010. Teams from BITS-Pilani, IIFT Delhi, IIFT Kolkata, NMIMS Mumbai, DCE, MIT Manipal etc were among the final 8. The first round was the Presentation round where the participants were given 20 minutes to present their ideas and 10 minutes for the Q&A round. The judges for the event included Prof. Vinay Sharma, DoMS, IITR, Prof. Shishir Sinha, Dept. of Chemical Engineering., IITR, Prof. M.K.Barua, DoMS, IITR, and two other judges from Onida India. The ideas presented were innovative, ground-breaking and impressive to say the least. Ideas varied from providing Tourist Kiosks at select locations to Building movable bridges on rivers to opening Innovative online Music Services. It obviously was a tough event to judge as was seen by the small margins of separation between the winners and the rest. But eventually 5 teams were selected who then entered the final round of Corpostrat.

The final round of Corpostrat was where participants had to fight it out in the open, a real world simulation of strategy and skills. Teams were given a budget of 100 INR each with which they had to make any sort of purchases and then make stuff out of the same and then try and sell them back! Different teams had different ideas; one team introduced gambling games, card games etc whereas another had mini-bowling and ring throwing games to attract money. Another team completely based its strategy on a shoot the cane game and ran all around the campus attracting huge crowds. While another team coerced a customer into buying a self made Sachin T-shirt for a princely 700 bucks! It sure was fun for all the teams who were each assigned volunteers from the organizers. 3 hours hence the winner had to be decided and BITS-Pilani came out on top making 2010 INR with NMIMS a close second at 1950 INR. What’s more, the teams got to keep the money they made! A wonderful Return of Investment of almost 20 times!

Pranay Sharma, Sayantani Chanda & Rishabh Bhandari from NMIMS Mumbai were declared the eventual winners of Corpostrat based on scores from both the rounds with Kushal Agarwal & Abhishek Kaushik from BITS-Pilani taking second spot. Aniruddha Jhawar, Sitanshu Gupta & Ashish Vaya from IT-BHU, Varanasi took the third spot. The winners took home 12000 INR, the First runners-up took home 8000 INR and the second runners-up, 5000 INR.

All in all, the event lived up to its billing and attracted huge crowds on both the days. The completely new format of Corpostrat seems to be a huge hit and certainly is here to stay for the years to come!

SPOT EVENTS(SPECTRUM)

MAGNATE:(27-28^th March)

Three rounds of electrifying thoughts and ideas. Participants were screened on their analytical and logical abilities in the first round, which was a written test. The fun started in the second round as they participated in Extempore, which gave the event 7 participants. These 7 participants were then asked to participate in a mock press conference where one by one they assumed the role of a controversial personality and were grilled by the rest of the participants as reporters. Divya Jain and Lekhsmi P of IIT Roorkee secured the first and second positions respectively and Rishabha Garg from AMU secured the third position. The event was judged by Dr. Rajat Agarwal, Dr. Nagendra Kumar, Mrs. Samiksha Jain and Mr. Tapan Susheel from HT. All in all, the event was a great hit.

DOMS STOCK EXCHANGE (26-28^th March)

Department of management studies organised a game simulating the real stock market scenario. The game was named DOMS Stock Exchange (DSE) and attracted a participation of more than 120 teams from all over the country. The USP of the game was that one could trade in the Stock Market through SMS or by calling .The screening was done through a business quiz which included questions mainly from current business affairs and some general topics also, out of the 120 teams that participated in the first round, 40 teams were shortlisted based on their performances in the quiz. Each team was allotted a broker who took their orders and sold or bought the shares for them. The game could also be played though mobile phone as continuous news updates were sent to the teams through SMS. The event saw participation from varied spheres like civil as well as Earth Sciences, not to mention the ever eager Management students who trade in the real stock markets on a regular basis, many teams from other colleges participated and performed exceedingly well.

The concept was appreciated by all the participants and was termed as a great learning experience by those who want to learn trading in real markets.

MIND YOUR BUSINESS (26^th-27^th March)

Mind Your Business is a business simulation game designed to give a feel of how various functions are linked to each other and how each contribute to the overall success of a company. The first stage of the event was held on 26^th and was a simple business quiz to test the basic knowledge of business terms. The event saw close to 100 entries for this round. The best eight teams were chosen to compete in the second stage.  In the second stage each team was provided with a laptop containing the business model simulated on excel. After a brief introduction, the teams were explained the rules of the game. As the day progressed the environment grew fiercer with teams trying to out bid their rivals and gain market share. The winning teams were decided on the size of their asset base. The event was a huge success mainly because of the enthusiasm shown by the participants and the successful coordination by the event coordinators.