An IPL lesson to test biz acumen

Many people have learnt ‘lessons’ from the commercial cricket venture Indian Premier League (IPL). Now it is time for some MBA students to learn business lessons from the concept.

The second-year MBA students of Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management in Mangalore are now hosting an intercollegiate T10 match – Sahyadri Premier League (SPL) – which is partly based on the lines of IPL.

Boris Fernandes, a second year MBA student of the college, told

Business Line that SPL has a company-like setup, which is owned and managed by students. Both first- and second-year students, numbering around 300, are the shareholders of the setup, and they elect board of directors.

Fernandes, who is also the chief executive officer of the setup, said the students were issued shares at ₹100 a share. Though each student has the option to purchase a maximum of 10 shares, most of them purchased only one share. Around ₹36,000 was raised, he said.

Based on the estimation done by the board of directors, Fernandes said, a minimum of 8 per cent dividend would be disbursed to the shareholders of SPL.

Asked how SPL would achieve that, he said SPL is attracting sponsorships from the local businesses and through registration fees. A local restaurant has agreed to be the event sponsor, he said.

On the game format, he said there is no player auction in SPL. The matches will be played on a knock-out format among 32 teams from different colleges in Karnataka from March 13 to 16. The winner of this edition will get an SPL trophy and a cash prize of ₹25,000.

Terming IPL as a marketing success story, Manish Gatty, another second-year MBA student and chairman of the board of directors of the setup, said their SPL experiment would help them understand the application of management theory into practice by using the concept such as IPL. The formats such as this will also help students develop entrepreneurial talent during the course of study, he said.

Fernandes said 10 marks are assigned for internal assessments in Viswesvaraya Technological University (the college’s MBA course comes under this university) for practical components.

A mock company kind of a setup by using IPL concept is an effort by them to put theory into practice and develop entrepreneurial skills, he said.