IIM-A grads to tackle Ahmedabad civic woes

As part of their annual festival, "Confluence", the students graduating from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), are giving Ahmedabad a helping hand by preparing plans to tackle problems in the city.

The best solutions, based on the inputs from various agencies advising the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, will find a place in the final plan, said N Ravichandran, faculty advisor at IIM-A, while addressing a press conference in Mumbai on Friday. Last year too, the festival had assisted the Gujarat government in evolving its IT policy.

The annual festival is being organised at a cost of Rs 60 lakh raised entirely by the student body. This year, Deepak Parekh, chairman of HDFC, has been made the advisory committee chairman.

The other industry luminaries in the committee include A M Naik, chairman and managing director, Larsen and Toubro, Anand Mahindra, vice-chairman and managing director of Mahindra&Mahindra, J J Irani, director of Tata Sons and Subir Raha, chairman and managing director of ONGC.

As part of the event, a live stock show competition is also being organised with real accounts at the BSE and actual trading at the exchange spread over a period of 8 weeks.

The students are being given a Rs 25,000 grant for the show. They even get to keep 30 per cent of the profits that they make. Other competitions include, corporate strategy plans where the finalists get to present their plans to Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries.

This year's Confluence will also attract competitive entries from Harvard Business School. In addition to fifteen domestic business management institutes, 20 institutes from abroad are also participating this year.