Third Day of IIMA Confluence 2008 Dedicated to Current Financial Crisis

Third Day of IIMA Confluence 2008 Dedicated to Current Financial Crisis

Workshop

The afternoon witnessed an interesting workshop on ‘Speaking Strategically & Listening Authentically’, conducted by Dr. Asha Kaul, a faculty member in the communications

area at IIM Ahmedabad. Dr. Kaul chose to make the session very interactive and sought the active participation of the audience through innovative exercises. She felt that 'Communications cannot be steeped in theory' and made use of video-clips to demonstrate some of the practical issues involved in effective communication. She explained that a good speaker should analyse the audience and establish a connection with them. Dr. Kaul brought out the importance of effective listening and illustrated how the same message may be interpreted in different ways by listeners. She also laid emphasis on structuring of content, "Speaking style is important to gain the listener’s attention, but, if the audience doesn’t retain the content, the purpose is defeated," she warned.

Events

The GSPC Masterplan, the flagship business plan event of Confluence 2008 has reached its culmination. The focus of the event is to identify business plans that can achieve scalability, sustainability, and are economically sound. Initially, 165 teams registered for the event. In the next stage, 85 business plans were evaluated. Finally, 7 teams from prestigious campuses such as IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Indore, ISB Hyderabad and XLRI Jamshedpur presented their innovative business plans in the fields of renewable energy, energy transmission and production. The plans explored areas of alternate power generation such as biomass and Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF). "...We are focusing on the B2B space especially in areas such as Surat where textiles mills will be given the option to replace coal with RDF," said Chinmay, a participant from ISB Hyderabad. He pointed out the calorific value to cost ratio of RDF is comparable with that of coal but since it doesn’t release harmful pollutants in the environment, this shall earn the firms valuable carbon credits. Other ideas also included ‘strategically placed small scale power plants’ and ‘corporative model for Jatropha based bio-diesel production’. The participants highlighted achieving economies of scale and huge employment opportunities. The eminent panel consisting of Mr. Raj Nair, Chairman, Avalon Consulting, Mr. P. P. G. Sharma, CEO, Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) and Mr. K. Prakash, Corporate Communication Manager, GSPC, judged the event. The total prize money for the event was Rs. 4,00,000.

Energy plan presented by Saransh Varma, Chintan Shah and Sidharth Vashist from IIM Indore was adjudged the best and received the first prize of INR 2,00,000 while Mohit Gopal, Anirudh Singh and Milan Saxena from IIM Ahmedabad secured the second place, and Deepak Sethia, Ravi K. and Vibhav Virlekar, another team from IIM Ahmedabad, stood third. "...too happy and overjoyed to comment," said Saransh after winning the prestigious event.

Judges had a tough job deciding the winners. "The innovativeness and quality in the plans shows the amount of hard work put in by the participants and the concepts were eye-openers for us," said Mr. Sharma while congratulating the winners.

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* Contributed by -
Ravi Shankar,
IIMA Confluence 2008,
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

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