I was overwhelmed by the numbers and quality of response this time. With 112 participants, it was the highest among the cases that I have so far written. It was also good to see more and more institutes participating. It was a tough exercise with lot of good responses and was almost a tie between four teams. I read the responses again for those four teams and finally chose one winner.

Unlike other times my criteria for scoring was more dependent on the analysis and understanding than on the final recommendation. I had given two options to choose from, so the respondents had to choose one of the two. What decided the winner was the solidity of the argument behind the selection and clarity of thought. And of course brevity.

I always request the participants to use structures to sharpen their thinking, but blindly using various models that we learn in theory demonstrates a lack of understanding of the concepts and the final purpose of those concepts.

Accordingly the team of Vishal Wagh and Amit Kumar from IIM Trichy wins this round with 18 points out of 20. I would definitely like to make a special mention of the other three teams which have scored 17 points – Akshaya Mathrubootham and Roopa Ramachandran from SIES, Mumbai, Arjun Rampal and Sanya Sehgal from IMT Ghaziabad, and Sanchit Malik and Pankaj Thakur from IIM Indore, Mumbai Campus. All teams that have scored 15 and above have had the right approach to the problem.

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