CREST
Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon, hosted its 9th Annual Management Fest, CREST 9.0, centered around the theme “The Era of Innovative Disruption”, on 16th and 17th January 2020. The theme provided a platform to budding managers to showcase their creative thinking on market trends and devise innovative products, services and strategies to fulfil the unquenchable needs of Indian consumers. The event welcomed students from various prestigious B-schools such as IMI Delhi, IMT Ghaziabad, NMIMS Mumbai, MDI Gurgaon, IIM Amritsar, etc.
The inauguration ceremony of Crest 9.0 commenced with the lighting of the lamp by Mr. Manu Ahuja, CEO and MD at Jubilant Industries accompanied by Dr. Debashis Sanyal, Director of Great Lakes Gurgaon and an expert in Financial management, along with other senior faculty members.
Dr. Sanyal set the stage by welcoming all guests and students and by inspiring them with his words on innovation, about how we as human beings have evolved from being hunters to crop-growers and now to innovators in technology.
Mr. Manu Ahuja, in his Keynote address, shared his experience and knowledge, and expressed that “Given that disruptions have brought numerous changes in our lives, the situation today is very different than what it was 10 years ago. Earlier we had one solution for every problem but today we have multiple solution for every problem.” Further he explained how to manage and take decisions in today’s scenario.
The extremely important things to be imbibed in order to manage such an environment are: Agility, Creative Thinking, Ability to Learn, and Emotional Intelligence.
He added that we should unceasingly work upon the following aspects irrespective of the environment:
- Vision, for what we aspire for, and where we want to be, for the self and for the organization,
- Being wary of naysayers, something that cannot be ignored,
- Failure, as it is not important to succeed but to learn,
- And lastly, as clichéd as it sounds, being hard-working. As they say “learn until it begins to hurt”.
Mr. Ahuja concluded by emphasizing on the fact that disruption is an on-going process, but if one learns to have the right attitude, learn to be a risk-taker, become a go-getter and have a story, then disruptions can act as a launch propellent.
C-Suite (Strategy)
C-SUITE, the Flagship event of CREST 9.0, is the centred around Strategy. This year, the finalist teams were asked to formulate a sound strategy on how to penetrate the saturated and financially bleeding airline industry.
11 teams, from B-Schools such as MDI Gurgaon, IMI New Delhi, FORE School of Management New Delhi, BIMTECH Noida, IIM Amritsar, Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce (SGGSCC) of Delhi University and Great Lakes Gurgaon participated in the final round of the event.
Teams were to prepare a strategic plan around various facets of management i.e. marketing, finance, operations etc. and come with their forecasts for next 5 years.
The event was adjudged by Dr. VP Singh, Director – PGDM, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon, along with Dr. Sridhar Telidevara, Associate Professor, Development Management Institute, Patna and Ms. Annu Sethi, Deputy GM, Corporate HR, MINDA Industries Ltd.
Brand-It (Marketing)
Brand-It was the branding and marketing strategy competition of Crest 9.0, conducted by Mar-Quest, the Marketing Club of Great Lakes Gurgaon.
All the shortlisted teams from the online quiz and the first print campaign rounds were given an unusual product which could be existing or even imaginary, such as an Oxygen Can for a quick dose of fresh air, and many others. The participants were also given a template of MQ Times, a fictional newspaper publication of MarQuest where the participants filled out details such as Headline and Content of an article surrounding the latest developments on their allotted industry in the Indian context, a Front Page Ad of new product which must include the Name, Tagline, Price, Brand Ambassador, Contents of the ad, and so on
The 3rd round was an Ad Campaign (Audio-Visual Round), in which the shortlisted teams were required to submit a Radio and a Video ad for the product. The finale was held on 17thJan 2020 at the Great Lakes Gurgaon campus where finalists presented their final presentation based on the research and marketing plan along with a video advertisement on the product given to them.
The competition was adjudged by 2 experts – Mr. Pradeep Saxena, Partner and Consultant with The Big Blue Banyan, and Prof. Vinod Kalia, an expert Marketing Professor at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon.
KYC (Finance)
The KYC (Know Your Company) competition was about presenting a Stock-Pitch before a Jury. In the stock market, a Stock-Pitch is used to attract investors on the basis of growth trends and promised Return on Investment upon investing in the stocks of the company. It is one of the most challenging tasks for future managers as it tests them not only on their sales pitch but also on their knowledge in financial models and valuation techniques.
In the mock auction, a non-elimination round, an amount of Rs. 40 Cr. was allotted to all the teams and they were asked to form a best performing IPL combination.
Finally, five finalists were shortlisted from Great Lakes Gurgaon, IMI, IIM Amritsar and BIMTECH.
The judges for KYC were Mr. Abhijit Roy who has been associated with SBI for the past 21 years in various capacities, and Dr. Preeti Goyal, Professor of Accounting and Finance at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon.
Datalytics (Analytics)
The Datalytics competition was an analytics hackathon where participants had to predict the attrition rate of a hypothetical company and recommend hiring and retaining solutions for the same. The teams had to come up with the best model with the highest accuracy, AUC-ROC and F1 score.
The participants consisted of teams from various prestigious institutions such as NMIMS and IMI as well as in-house teams from Great Lakes Gurgaon. The teams had to first solve a case to get the password of the dataset, clean the dataset and then come up with the best analytics model with the highest accuracy, and present recommendations from the HR perspective. The participants used various analytical tools and models such as binomial logistic regression, CART and Neural Networks for analysing and verifying results.
The judges were Dr. Rakshita Sharma, Vice President of Human Capital at Bobble AI Technologies, and Dr. Sridhar Telidevra, Associate Professor at Development Management Institute, Patna.
Negotium (Operations)
Negotium, the Operations event of Crest 9.0 started with a bang, getting 84 registrations for the first round itself. The first round was a quiz based on general knowledge, concepts of supply chain and operations.
The teams that made it to the second round were given a case study on operations management. The teams were to prepare a presentation based on the solution of the case study and submit within 24 hours. After the two elimination rounds, the 5 shortlisted teams were invited to participate in the final round at Great Lakes Gurgaon campus. The finale included a case study which was given to the participants a day before the finale wherein each team was expected to prepare a presentation and present it to the judges. The presentation was accompanied with a Q&A session with the judges and all teams were commended on their unique, innovative and modern approaches.
The judges for the finale were Mr. Lalit Upadhyay, a renowned academician and supply chain analyst at Federal Mogul Goetze India Ltd., Prof. SK Palhan and Prof. Ravindra Ojha, esteemed academicians in the area of Operations.
Scavenger-Hunt and Pro Show
The Scavenger hunt was conducted in two rounds, the first being the elimination round and the second being the decider. 27 teams participated in the same and 5 teams made it to the final round. Contesting teams had to perform various activities throughout the campus, look for clues and solve puzzles to make it to the next round. Excitement and creativity were at their peaks throughout the Scavenger Hunt.
The magnanimous Pro-Show was one of a kind masterpiece, involving various performances which swept everyone off their feet. The event started with a classical veena performance followed by a Karaoke sing-along performance. These were followed by a couple of eagerly awaited dance performances. The event ended on a higher note with different dance forms such as Contemporary, Salsa, Hip-Hop, Lyrical and Bhangra to engage the audience, followed by a DJ Night with an open floor for everyone to show their moves.
Awards and Winners
| Event | Winner | 1st Runner-up |
| C-Suite (Flagship) | Analytics Toh Jaan Hain (MDI Gurgaon) | Trade-off (FORE, Delhi) |
| Brand-It (Marketing) | Thinkers (GLIMG) | Lakers (GLIMG) |
| KYC (Finance) | Captivators (GLIMG) | Equity (IMI New Delhi) |
| Datalytics (Analytics) | RIG (GLIMG) | Minimal Variance (NMIMS) |
| Negotium (Operations) | Utopians (IMT Ghaziabad) | Dreamcatchers (IMI New Delhi) |
| Treasure Hunt | Dosas for Life (GLIMG) | Black Hawks (GLIMG) |
