But today, the situation is changing, as the Institute of Management Consultants of Indias (IMCI) efforts bear fruit. As the apex body of the management consultancy profession in the country, IMCIs Mumbai chapter has instituted a Best Summer Project Competition among the leading business schools since 1992. This year too, seven business schools in Mumbai Jamnalal Bajaj, Narsee Monjee, SP Jain, KJ Somaiya, South Indian Educational Society, LN Welinkar Institute of Management, and Mumbai Educational Trust along with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and Symbiosis, Pune were invited. And recently, a motley crowd of students, academicians and IMCI members braved the cyclonic rains that lashed Mumbai, to attend the grand finale.
But why did IMCI embark on this venture in the first place? Explains Arvind Mahajan, president, IMCI, and director, AF Ferguson: At one level, our competition seeks to encourage excellence, recognise and promote work of high quality done by the management students during their academic stint and also bridge the gap that exists between students and industry. At another level, its a soft-sell by the management consultancy profession. Adds a management consultant: Till recently, the management consultancy profession was clearly low-profile. Now we need to attract high quality talent from the leading B-schools. But although the students are interested, not much is known about the consultancy profession for them to make an informed choice.
The event, which attracts a large group of students and administrators, is a useful occasion to tell them about the career opportunities in management consultancy today. Explains Asitava Sen, senior consultant, AF Ferguson and one of the organisers of this years event: In many ways, the Summer Project is also a microcosm of a typical consultancy assignment. Which is why IMCI chose it as an useful entry point to build a relationship with B-school students.
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Interestingly, based on a request from the Institutes administrators, last year in the month of March, a team of management consultants from IMCI held two half-day clinics for the first year students at Mumbais Narsee Monjee Institute. The objective? We found students were largely ill-prepared to handle an unstructured project, explains Mahajan. For the students who had already been given their project briefs, our efforts was to discuss their projects and brainstorm ways to approach them. In the process, it was an useful way to initiate them into how management consultants actually work.
Typically, a group of about six to seven students were attached to a management consultant. The response from the students has been very good and now IMCI is planning to extend it to other institutes like SP Jain, which have also shown interest.
The run-up to this years grand finale began a month in advance. Each Institute was asked to send in three of their best summer projects. This year, a few institutes actually opted out because they felt they simply did not have the quality of projects to enter the competition, reveals Sen. In all, 22 entries were received. These projects were screened over a two day session by an internal seven member committee. Apart from reviewing the project reports, they asked each student to make a 15 minute presentation, with an additional five minutes earmarked for questions and answers.
In the end, five projects were selected for the last round. The institutes that made it to this stage were: Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad), Narsee Monjee, two students from KJ Somaiya and one from SP Jain. The short-listed projects were a varied lot, ranging from developing an executive information system for the treasury in ICICI by Sanjeev Dhumir from IIM, to developing a rupee derivative product for Credit Lyonnais by Sonam Kapadia at Narsee Monjee. But there was a distinct slant towards finance.
Over the years, Ive found that students who opt for finance projects tend to get a lot more freedom than marketing students, who are often used as low-cost data collection sources by organisations, affirms Mahajan. The only marketing project that was selected for the finals was from SP Jain that too, a social marketing project undertaken for the government of Andhra Pradesh by Riaz M Raihan.
A distinguished panel of judges including Heinz India managing director, Pradeep Poddar, BHF Banks (of Germany) chief representative in India, Vijay Meghani, and S Narayan, chief executive of Mahindra Realty and Infra-structure Developers, graded the presentations on the students depth of knowledge, his understanding of the clients needs and his own contribution and level of involvement, communication skills and the ability to field the questions from the house.
It turned out to be a keen contest for the first two slots between Dhumir from IIM and SP Jains Raihan. The excitement at the Y B Chavan Auditorium was palpable. Reveals a student who attended the competition, It could have gone either way. Ultimately, it was SP Jains Raihan with his superior presentation skills and immense depth of knowledge, who moved into first spot, closely followed by IIMs Dhumir. Raihans project which entailed a review of an Integrated Rural Development Project undertaken by the government of Andhra Pradesh followed by a strategy for improvement came in for special praise as did Dhumirs finance-cum IT project for ICICI.
It was a memorable moment for the two winners as they received their prizes from the chief guest, Arun Nanda, executive director, Mahindra & Mahindra. Raihan received a cash award of Rs 10,000 and a rolling trophy, while Dhumir took back Rs 5,000 in cash and a rolling trophy.
Sweating it out in the summer months will no longer be in vain. For enterprising B-school students, theres a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.