It was a surprisingly low scoring case, though the number of responses was the highest among the four cases we’ve published so far. Most of the entries relied more on published analysis rather than offer their own interpretation of what went wrong and what could be done.

A lot of teams blindly used theoretical models without understanding their real use. Also, what I always look for is focus and clarity. Most of the entries recommended too many things at the same time, or their analysis and recommendation did not match.

The analysis by a number of teams from IIM Bangalore was good.

Two teams were very close and the winners — Sameer and Saurabh — pipped Sairam and Shivraj, also from IIM-B, by just one mark. Their recommendations were more focused. Shifia and Vignesh from IIT Roorkee and Vijayalakshmi, the lone entry from Amrita School of Management, Coimbatore, were also impressive with their analysis.

Almost 60 teams, most of them made up of two people each, participated in the Liril case study contest. Students from all the top IIMs and from B-schools as varied as MICA, IIT Roorkee, IMT Ghaziabad, MDI Gurgaon, ISB Hyderabad, SIES College of Management Studies, Mumbai, and many more, tried their hand at this contest.