Nitie's online challenge Mastishk gets record hits

India's 'first fully online challenge', Mastishk, which as started as a pilot project by the students of National Institute of Industrial Engineering (Nitie) here to promote their annual festival, is becoming a regular feature with international participation.

The business challenge, in its second year, went live from October 2, and till now, its website has received 50,000 hits. Almost 5,000 participants have registered from more than a hundred organisations across the globe, which include B-schools, corporates and NGOs. Thus, participation has nearly doubled from 2,500 participants last year.

Interestingly, the strength of international audience has also gone up with participants coming in from 20 countries, up from 18 last year. In fact, one of the winners last year was a student from a Thailand-based institute.

"This year, other than students and professionals, we have also got aspiring B-school students participating in the contest. The games are from as diverse topics as strategy, financial markets and economic issue to general knowledge and grammar," says Karan Sadhwani, one of the organising students.

Heightened interests have improved the prize stakes with each of the five games having a Rs 24,000 price tag. Moreover, there are about 45 informal games conducted on the sidelines with a prize money of Rs 500 each.

"A few of the games are very novel. One of them, Khoj, targets the best search engine specialists. One has to come to the required URL with the least number of phrases," says Harsha Venkatesh, also a student and organiser.

One of the main reasons for the popularity of Mastishk, say the students, is its 'endorser' "" the first B-school comic character Arbit Choudhary. Choudhury's example of a merger is a live-in relationship and that of an acquisition is marriage!

"We also plan to invite articles on important issues so that the concept has a year-long interest," says Venkatesh.

The main festival Prerana was on till Saturday.