SPJIMR shines on GE Day - Part 1

This is first of the two parts of the article written by Kartikeya Rathore about his team Panacea's experience before, during and after GE Day. The guys who made us proud were Rahul Jain aka RJ, Rachit Agarwal, Abhishek Ranjan, Aditya Baliga aka Addy and Kartikeya Rathore of PGDSM MIT 03. Good goin guys!
- Ganga

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13^th Oct – 3rd Nov: Just before we left for our Diwali holidays we had registered for the GE Day. The opportunity was exciting, GE was a dream company and the prizes were just the icing on the cake. There was no way we would let this go!! Within 30 minutes of receiving the email the team was formed, the topic was decided as “Early Health Solution – Is India Ready For It” and not as “Potable Water”, the registration was done, and the tasks divided for holidays. So, Rachit and Ranjan had to research Cancer as a disease area; Rahul had to look at how hospitals actually go about understanding the market for Healthcare equipment; Addy was looking at the statistics ad trends; and me – I decided to work on the business model.

We had our short-listing round of presentations on the 3^rd of November 2006. There were 77 teams across India, that had registered and only about 1 in 3 were going to get an opportunity to participate on GE DAY on the 13 November 2006.

We were back from holidays and there was little time, the brainstorming sessions started and we put together the ideas we had during our holidays. The business model was decided and we had our first cut presentation. It was sent to the GE team and we were now waiting for the presentations to happen. Soon we realized there were many errors in our presentation – the spellings weren’t right, there was a issue with the version of Office being used and so all the images were turned upside down. And we couldn’t do much about it. We decided to go through with what we had.

On the 3^rd, the VC didn’t work, and we had to go along with a tele conference. Anyways, we did what we had to and when we got out, honestly, there we thought our chances of making it to the semi finals were meek.

6^th Nov – 10^th Nov: Rachit and Addy would agree with me…when I say the emotions were running high…they wouldn’t forget the moment I ran into their rooms and screamed “We are going to Delhi”. Frantic phone calls were made to let Ranjan and RJ know as well. Actually everybody was tensed and none believed me when I told them that we were going to Delhi. Anyways a copy of the mail convinced them all, Soon we realized we were the only team from SP Jain and also the only team from the Mumbai segment to make it through to the Semi’s. It was a proud moment for all of us and also a huge moment as we realized this maybe was our chance to let the GE world know PGDSM MIT exists and is good enough, if not the best.

The preparation began for the final presentation and the business models were tweaked over the next few nights. The brainstorming sessions happened through out the nights and everybody was researching and working hard in those few days. It was a common sight to see RJ and Rachit scratching their heads working over the financials, Ranjan listening to webcasts to understand the latest technological research in Cancer. Addy was looking at the Trends and the Multi Level Marketing aspect. And thanks to the help from Lalwani Sir and Renuka Ma’am, we arrived at a model that we thought would work. Me – I was just freaking out.

Anyways, the presentation was made…a few trial runs were done in front of some our batchmates and we were geared up for the challenge...

Cheers,
Kartik