Montreal Memories - Team IIMB @ JMSB Circa 2005: Starting June 05 we had to tell ourselves that travel is a strict no-no; be it local over weekends or international for client visits. We had started pursuing our non-residential postgraduate program (PGSEM) at IIM, Bangalore with weekend classes.

Circa 2006: January 1, 2006 four of us get to land our feet in three continents; Asia (Bangalore), Europe (Frankfurt) and North America (Montreal). Courtesy PGSEM.

Somewhere in September 05 students at IIMB received an invitation for participation in the international case competition from John-Molson School of Business (JMSB), Concordia University, Montreal. It was their 25th anniversary. In order that a team could represent IIMB, a case analysis was supposed to be carried out and teams would compete against each other locally. Bijesh, Monish, Nelson, Vignesh and myself (Arvind) thought it was definitely worth a try. Owing to personal constraints, Nelson opted out and the remaining four of us formed a team. And we are forever happy to say that our team got selected to represent IIMB. The sojourn for upholding the brand called IIMB in Montreal had begun.

The competition also required that a coach accompany us. Being first timers at this competition, which has a history of a quarter of a century, we were not very certain about the rules and regulations. So a coach who could interface the whole team was imperative. We approached Professor Abhoy, who willingly agreed to accompany us. Given the fact the all of us are working professionals and weekends inevitably are reserved for classes, it was hard for us to put in more than 3-4 hours a week towards the preparation. We borrowed cases from Prof. Abhoy and most of the Sundays were spent at Bijesh or Vignesh’s place, for bare minimum preparations. Our feedback sessions with Prof. Abhoy helped us work on our analysis and presentation areas. Days rolled by quickly and our departure to Canada was fast approaching.

Prof. Abhoy had a tight travel schedule in December. A string of holidays in the last week of the month proved to be a dampener for VISA processing. Owing to some unavoidable circumstances, our prof’s VISA got unduly delayed and unfortunately he could not accompany us. Prior to the day of departure, he wished us all well and the four of us left Bangalore on January 1st, 2006 and reached Montreal the same day via Frankfurt.

Day I (Jan 1,06)
Our arrival was two days prior to the actual start of the competition. After a whopping 20 hours on flight, we had the first glance of snow and the feel of impending cold at Montreal. Huddling up at our youth hostels, we did little but sleeping. A short walk in the evening snow was enough to push was back to rest.



Day II (Jan 2,06)
The venue of the competition was Hilton, situated at downtown Montreal. The scheduled program for the day was the coaches briefing and we could garner some details about the competition, albeit not fully. Then came the windfall. Vignesh, on our transit via Frankfurt to Montreal was seated next to Dr.Klaus, the coach from University of Paderborn. Dr.Klaus has been coaching teams from Paderborn for more than 10 years. He had a good chat with him and during the course of discussion; he was told that our coach could not accompany us. Incidentally, Univ. of Paderborn, had an assistant coach, Sebastian, who himself was a participant last year. During the meeting, he volunteered to steer the ship for us; a bond we will cherish forever.

With no official events in the daytime, we decided to stroll around Montreal. The chilly winds with temperature hovering around –10 C, it was polar climate for Bangaloreans. But the spirit to explore the city drove us to quite a few places. We visited the Concordia and McGill university campuses, flashing the cameras as much as possible. The evening marked the opening ceremony of the competition at the Museum of Montreal. Draws were announced which placed the 36 competing teams in six divisions. We were in the second division, alongside of the host team, JMSB and four others.

Day III (Jan 3,06)
The schedule for the cases was quite hectic. Two cases per day, five in total at the divisional level with one for semis. Finals were on Saturday, the 7th Jan.

A brief on the competition – Each team plays against the other five at the divisional level. Toppers of the division move to semis; and the next three toppers, irrespective of division, also make it to the semis. Semis will be for three groups; and winner from each group competes for the coveted trophy in the finals. Each case analysis is for three hours (barring the one short case, which is for one hour). Each team of four team members sans the coach, works in a room, without any external interactions and within the three hours comes up with a solution to the problem posed in the case and prepares acetates for the presentation. Right after the analysis and preparation phase, the presentation follows for 25 minutes and 15 minutes of Q&A. The competing teams as a whole are rated on a scale of 11 i.e. 7-4, 8-3 or higher scores indicate that the team having better score has won convincingly. An additional 30 points is awarded to the winning team. A 6-5 is a close call and hence the winning team gets 20 points and the losing team gets 10.

Our first opponent was the host team. We were a little apprehensive but our coach, Sebastian instilled lot of confidence and we went ahead with our case analysis. It was a company called Ryovac and the case about their acquisition spree and accelerated growth. We presented the case and the results were due after we finished the second case for the day. The second was based on CRL, a specialized poultry egg producer aspiring to acquire a Mexican poultry farm. Two cases a day was good enough to drain us out completely and favorable results alone could lift us up. Sebastian acceded that the first was a little tough call for the judges while we were better in the second. The results were up by the evening and we were pleasantly surprised to have 8-3 and 7-4 victories respectively. It was party time.

That evening we had a choice of attending a dinner or whiling time at a local laser game parlor. We decided on the latter. It was fun to shoot at each other in the dark maze with laser guns. We retired to bed thinking about the next two cases.

Day IV (Jan 4,06)
This was the day of the live case and the short case. Cirque-de-Soleil, a circus company was selected for the live case. The Corporate VP had a presentation following which we had a analysis and presentation. The second case was a short case on ExonMobil. One hour of number crunching is what we did in that. At the end of the day, we had the results for the morning case and we had a 7-4 victory. So far, so good. That night, we joined our extended team of Paderborn and team from Tennessee for dinner and it was gala event.

Day V (Jan 5,06)
We woke to a small shock when we knew that our last victory was a close 6-5. In fact, it had another consequence. It would potentially hamper our chances of winning the divisions’ topper award. The other teams with a four case victory were ahead in total points tally. Sebastian again urged that we should just try our best and leave the tallying to the organizers. The last case was that of Wal-Mart in China; an interesting case to end the divisional round.

A luncheon banquet was arranged prior to the semis. All the teams were on the tip of their toes to know if they had made to the next crucial round. As we love to have, our team had a victory of 8-3 in the last case. A pleasant surprise was that ours was the only team with an all-five-case victory and we topped the divisional rounds. We were just two steps away from what we presumed would be the most defining moments of our lives.

Semis were in groups of three and the case was NYK, a shipping and a terminal operator company planning to acquire another terminal operator. After our presentation, we also witnessed the other two groups from our group and we knew instantly, it was a close call. The results were due at the theme party that night.

The theme party began at 8-00 in the night and we got to see people in varied outfits. Just before the partying began, the results were to be announced. We had lost out to another team from our group and it was rather a not-so-cheerful end of our outing. But it did keep up with the statistics of this competition – no divisional topper has ever been able to win the trophy. We partied hard with all our new friends from different countries and retired to our rooms very late. There was nothing officially waiting anymore for us.

Day VI (Jan 6,06)
While we failed to reach the finals, we surely made lot of friends, not just from other countries but lot of Indians residing in Canada as well. Some Indian students at JMSB were volunteers to this event and three of them got very close to all of us. Deepesh, Phalguni and Amudhu were volunteers at the event and they invited us over lunch on Friday. Deepesh had prepared wonderful Pav-Bhaji and we savored thoroughly. They surely made our life easy by serving us spicy Indian stuff. We roamed around Montreal again, for some shopping.

Evening was the official presentation ceremony. The winner was John Molson B-School, but all of us there had loads to carry back; those wonderful moments that would go along with us for years to come. For us, we had the divisional toppers award and a pleasant surprise in the form of the team-spirit award that we shared with Tennessee.

Day VII (Jan 7,06)
The last day in Montreal was quite short. We just had time to bid good-bye to all our friends and it was just another 20 hours that separated us from our routine life. We shared our flight till Frankfurt with our extended team from Paderborn and parted ways with pleasant memories.

Big thanks to our institute, for encouraging us to participate in this event, to our coaches both at home and abroad for their valuable guidance and the organizers of the event for their immaculate and meticulous planning and execution.

For those frozen moments: http://community.webshots.com/album/542530768ygPpUW

For more on the competition details: www.mbacasecomp.com  ¶ Tuesday, January 24, 2006