Louis Perrin, Vikas Kakkar, Suryaansh Makked, Harshavardhan Hemant S, Carrie Chatelain and Kathleen Rand – all post graduate students of management from Sauder School of Business, Canada and IIMB, India – bested 11 other top teams to win the Third Annual Case Challenge on Reversing Childhood Malnutrition, hosted by the University of British Columbia - Sauder School of Business and Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, and held at IIMB here today.
“Their out of the box provocative solution to open defecation and the conversations around Swacch Bharath made us choose the team that focused on sanitation and malnutrition,” said Professor Murali Chandrashekaran, a jury member and Senior Associate Dean (Strategic Partnerships and Global Initiatives), Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Canada.
The case competition’s theme ‘Leading Change: Reversing Global Malnutrition’ focused on malnutrition which has been recognized as one of the major threat to the world’s public health by WHO.
The challenge consisted of twelve teams with 6-7 students in each team comprising students from both the institutions. The mixed teams worked on the case and presented it on February 24 (Tuesday) 2015 in front of a panel of respected academics and professionals.
The jury included Dr. Amit Prakash, Senior Director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd, Professor Chetan Subramaniam, Department of Economics and Social Sciences; Chairperson, Office of International Affairs, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Professor Murali Chandrashekaran, Senior Associate Dean (Strategic Partnerships and Global Initiatives), Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Canada, Ms. Rani Desai, Head of Biocon Foundation, Professor Suresh Bhagavatula, NSRCEL, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and Mr. Vedamoorthy Namasivayam, Senior Director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd.
Kathleen Rand, Vikas Kakkar, Louis Perrin, Harshavardhan Hemant S, Carrie Chatelain, SuryaanshMakked identified food quality, food quantity and health and sanitationas key issues leading to malnutrition in India. “We focused on sanitation and malnutrition because open defecation leads to contamination of food and water, diarrhea and loss of protein and iron in infants and children. We worked with existing social habits. We just changed the way how waste from defecation will be handled. Bio Waste will be collected and used to make fertilizer products,” explained Vikas.
Showing how people could be incentivized to be part of this solution, the group also listed the possibilities of job creation, increased crop yields and lower energy costs. They proposed a pilot project in North India for a year and a social enterprise structure with the government providing capital investment free. Taking into account that the challenges to their solutions lie in breaking taboos and factoring in people trying to cheat the system, the team also handled the jury’s rigorous questions rather well.
The other two finalists were a team that made presentations on providing locally produced fortified nutrition mixes to malnourished children using a bottom-up approach with a pilot project in 3 villages of Raichur district in Karnataka and a team that drew attention to the need to spread awareness on breastfeeding and maternal health to tackle the issue.
This Annual Case Challenge serves as a platform for the teams to showcase their potential in addressing this “real world case” of an actual organization in front of eminent panelists. It also gives an opportunity to work with peers from various backgrounds to exchange and understand the numerous factors which influence the planning, implementation and execution of global concerns to bring out a change in the world. The participants used their skills and expertise to handle the issues which arose in the due course of the competition.
The team which presented the most viable solution to the managerial problems posed in this proposed case study walked away with a grand prize.
