IIM, Bangalore business student runs top simulated company in world

NORTHFIELD, Ill., November 19, 2009 : Kiran V Holla of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, has won the 2009 Fall Capstone® Business Simulation Challenge, an international business simulation competition that attracted 522 competitors from university campuses in India, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Chile and the United States.

Kiran first used the Capstone® Business Simulation under Professor Dharam Pal in the Executive General Management Program at IIM Bangalore.  He entered the international competition and in November reached the finals, competing against five other virtual CEOs.  Kiran achieved 864 points out of 1000 on the Balanced Score Card to win the competition.  Professor Pal also taught the 4th Place winners in the competition, Anubhav Bansal and Gopal Garg of the Institute of Management Technology in Nagpur.

Kiran hopes to move into the microfinance industry.  He said using Capstone® in his university course was “an excellent opportunity for us to apply the principles that we had learnt in theory.”

“For example, we had studied subjects like sales forecasting, inventory management, corporate financing etc and Capstone® gave us a good opportunity to gain further insight into the subjects.

“Most importantly, Capstone® is structured as an oligopolistic market and hence ‘strategic behavior – decisions that take into account possible reactions of others’, play a major role. This was the part we loved best. Each team needs to make intelligent guesses on how rivals would react when it contemplates expanding capacity or cutting prices etc. This is something that is best experienced practically. No amount of theoretical learning can beat this experience!”

Five of the six finalists in the Capstone® Challenge were from non-American universities.  Capsim’s coordinator of the challenge, May Zelner, described the particular challenges for finalists from India.

“During qualifying rounds, students make a new set of decisions every day, whereas in their courses they are used to making decisions once a week and having time to scrutinize the results and collaborate with teammates.  During the finals it is even more intense with Round 1 on Saturday, then Rounds 2 through 8 on Sunday.

“In India, that means Round 2 of the final begins at 3am on Monday, with six more rounds every hour after that!  The students who compete have jobs, family obligations and other courses to study so their time is precious.  It is so impressive to see the focus and effort they put into the competition.

“I joke with students about their success in the competition, but I honestly won’t be surprised to see one of them on the cover of Forbes Magazine one day.”

The Capstone® Business Simulation Challenge is a global online competition held in the spring and fall semester each year.  The competition is hosted by Capsim Management Simulations, Inc® of Northfield Il, the world’s largest provider of business simulations to college graduate and undergraduate students.  The annual competitions are open to all students who have used a Capsim business simulation in their university course.

Source:SansRisk Business Solutions P Ltd, Hyderabad

Date: 21st Nov.,2009

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