GIM Students Make It to Finals of An International Competition and Get An All Expense Trip to ESIC, Spain to Attend the Finals

Online, July 14, 2014 (Newswire.com) - A team of three students from Goa Institute of Management (GIM) have made it to the final round of the International Marketing competition organized by ESIC Business & Marketing School, Spain. Second year students, Robin Garg, Disha Sharma and Devansh Baghel successfully completed three gruelling rounds that had 1800 teams from 76 countries vying for a spot in the finals. Now they will be competing with the top six teams in the world on the final day of the competition on 18th November, 2014.

This annual global marketing competition is held in four stages and will have two teams each from Asia-Oceania, Europe-Africa and the Americas competing in the finals. While the Europe-Africa teams have come from Russia and Spain, and the results for the Americas are yet to come, Indian teams have won the honours in the Asia-Oceania group. Goa Institute of Management has managed to achieve the feat, along with IIM Bangalore, and, obviously, both the teams are excited and energized.

However, GIM students admit that it has been a long and gruelling road to the finals. For the competition, students had to start an automobile company and manage it in an online simulation. Talking about the different stages involved, Disha says, "During the initial rounds, we had to compete with five companies already established in the market with a high market share. We had to compete with them in the fields of finance, marketing, operations etc."

Success in the first round brought them to the quarterfinals where the team competed with five others that had qualified from the previous stage. The team from GIM managed to hold its own and went into the semi finals with the top 36 teams in the world. This is where simulations got into advanced mode and there was no room for error because each team had to come in first place in its respective stimulation to make it to the finals. The trio put their best foot forward when it mattered the most and qualified for the finals.

Their reward now is an all expense paid trip to Spain sponsored by ESIC. The team, however, is geared towards matching its wits with the best in the world and has its eyes set on the coveted prize. Participating in competitions and winning seems to have become a norm for this team. "We have qualified for National level finals of some big events including PETA India's cause marketing competition and Yourstory's Aashayein," Disha says. "We keep an eye out for competitions that can help us develop our management concepts."

It looks like the concept of "the team that stays together, wins together" works well for this trio. In fact, according to Robin it's partly the reason behind their success. "We are in the same groups for our projects at GIM," he explains. "We have participated in several quizzes together, so we have good compatibility. We distribute work amongst each other and verify it. At this competition we handled different areas based on our strengths, which helped us immensely during various stages."

The team's commitment to the competition is visible from the fact that though the three of them were in different cities for their Summer Internships, they would Skype and devote plenty of time to preparation. Robin also credits the Marketing Simulation (Markstrat) course taught at GIM in the first year for their success. The course was conducted by Prof. Tarun Pasricha, who was also the mentor of the team and will be travelling with them for the finals in Spain. That will be a big boost to the spirits and confidence levels of the team that's currently riding on a high, but is also aware of the fact that the competition will be a lot tougher in the finals.

According to Devansh, it was Prof. Pasricha's presence that made a huge difference to their prospects at the competition: "There were some tasks that would have seemed enormous had Prof. Pasricha not been there. He organized sessions on how to compete in a simulation environment, which prepared us for the competition in the best possible way." The rest, as they say, is history. But this trio from GIM is hungry for more and wants to do its institute proud by going for the big one in Spain.

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