XIMB Wins Cognizant's 'Boardroom: Smart Business Plan Contest 2008'

XIMB Wins Cognizant's 'Boardroom: Smart Business Plan Contest 2008'
Post-event Press-release

For the preliminary rounds this year, Cognizant received about 400 entries from students of B-schools across India and the Asia Pacific region. Of them, 15 were shortlisted for the semi-finals. The semi-finalists included teams from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

(IIM-A), Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM-C), Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L), Indian Institute of Management, Indore (IIM-I), Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K), Indian School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad, Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) Jamshedpur, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) Delhi, Xavier's Institute of Management, Bhubaneshwar (XIMB), National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) Mumbai, and S. P. Jain Center of Management, Singapore.

Cognizant's senior management members and domain experts with substantial experience "mentored" the shortlisted teams for about two weeks on various aspects of their business plan and global business issues, and introduced them to the dynamics of the corporate world - a unique feature of B-Plan contests.

"The B-Plan contest provided a platform for the students to learn what it takes to successfully grow a business, reckoning all aspects of business across strategy, competitive dynamics, financials, marketing and operations," said R. Chandrasekaran, President & Managing Director, Cognizant, who himself is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore. "Cognizant has always fostered a spirit of entrepreneurship within the organization and this has been the key to its success. This contest not only provided a unique opportunity to budding management students across B-schools to get creative and propose new business avenues for Cognizant, but also gave us an outside-in perspective of an important stakeholder-the management student community. The contest also helped us expand our network of stake-holders, which holds the key to knowledge management and collaboration in the Web 2.0 era."

Concluded.

Contributed by -
Harsh Kabra,
Corporate Marketing & Communications,
Cognizant.

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