We present Ignite. The attempt is to take a number pressing social issues that our country faces, issue related to education, healthcare, agriculture, etc, and create 70 workable ideas to address them in a sustainable, original and innovative manner. You can be a part of the initiative by contributing to the ideas.

We will be adding more than a dozen new ideas everyday for the next five days.

Ignite is part of Ashwamedha the flagship event of ahvan ‘09. Ashwamedha is the hunt for the finest leader from among the top B-Schools of India.

Visit Ignite-Ashwamedha

In the online promotional round, only 4 of the teams could get all the questions…….phewww… And you thought the challenge ends right there?! Oh noooo! You are dead wrong if you think that way. That’s because those were just the teasers. Just after registrations ended at 5:30 p.m., Cognitive Knot, the first round of Gordian Knot, started with a bang on the 4th of November at 1800 hours. Till the 6th of November, the 190 teams are going to fight it out to get all of it right, as soon as they can. Though there have been comparisons drawn to some other events, any competing team will vouch for the fact that Gordian Knot is at a much higher level than any of the others. Here we are solving the problem with one strike of the intellect, not meandering about looking for the solution. But beware my friends!! It is only going to get tougher from here on. Great warriors have bitten the dust in great battles. So will all those ‘strong’ teams who do not remain focussed on the competition.
But Gordian Knot is not just a huge challenge. It also stands for a lot of fun. Ask all those who are working the puzzles out right now, or plan to do it tomorrow. Too bad for those who did not register for Gordian Knot and are not getting to partake of the joy of the competition. From here on, we will move to breaking the Creative Knot. But more of it next time. Till then, keep striking at the knot!!!!!

Klueless, an integral part of IIM-Indore’s annual management fest Ahvan (earlier known as IRIS) has grown from strength to strength over the years. Last year, it saw an astounding 6 million hits. What is this phenomenon that has caught this nation by storm?  That has become an addiction among the young and old alike. That has engaged one and all.

Klueless is primarily an online game wherein a participant has to crack the clue at a given level to move on to the next level. Cracking the clue requires some lateral thinking, some googling and quite often just some presence of mind. This year’s version promises to be even more engaging and enthusing. The Link for this year’s klueless will be put up on the website in the first week of November. It goes without saying that there are lots of prizes to be won.

For more, watch this space.

Klueless over the years

Klueless 1

Klueless 2

Klueless 3

Klueless 4

Caution: It can be addictive.

The phone rang and it jolted me out of my state of fanciful musing. I looked at the name of the caller. “Ohh……my good ol’ pal from yesteryears…”. The conversation started of with the usual ‘wassup’ bit, and then I told him that I was working for Ahvan. “And what is that? I thought your management fest was called IRIS!”, said he. And then I told him how IRIS had transformed to ‘Ahvan – a call to the nation’ this year. “Oh! So you are working for Ashwamedha are you?!” came the question from the other side. “You know Ashwamedha do you?!” was my surprised reply to the question. And then he told me how every Indian MBA worth his salt has dreamt of being ‘the one’ at Ashwamedha for the last seven years of Ashwa’s existence.

For an event enjoying popularity of that magnitude, Ashwa started out as a brand new concept and has become a trendsetter, pioneering a whole new genre of events across B-Schools. Obviously, the event team is not talking about what it plans to do this year since they re-invent themselves every year. All they say about Ashwa is that ‘The event places the participants in a series of simulated real life scenarios where the participants have to use all their wits, knowledge and passion to prove their mettle.’

The event will be launched on the 24^th of October with prize money of Rs.150000 (tentatively). The initial elimination process of online rounds will bring down the numbers from 1000+ applicants to ‘30 potential winners’. From then on, each one watches the others’ moves and out of this stiff competition, emerges the winner. Meanwhile, sponsors are vying for Ashwamedha, jostling for the eyeballs that Ashwa grabs. The buzz on the campus is that Ashwa in its new avatar is going to be one of Ahvan’s biggest successes. The personal interview round which promises to be nothing short of dramatic will decide ‘the real leader’. The focus is primarily going to be Ahvan’s theme ‘Imagining India’, where we look for leadership that is not restricted to corporate houses but makes a meaningful difference to this nation.

Cerebrate: The objective of this event is to identify the best management talents in India in the fields of Finance, Marketing, Operations and HR through soliciting solutions to live case studies. This gives the students an opportunity to prove their ability to perform in the corporate world (since case studies are live). The theme of the event is “Be the next Management Guru.”

Cerebrate Marketing:

Cerebrate Marketing is a live case study competition. It has 2 stages: first being the online round and the final held at IIM Indore campus. Participants from top 30 B-schools present their solutions to the industry experts and get a chance to interact with them and fine tune their marketing strategy skills with their help.

The tentative launch date of the events first and second round is  2^nd November 2009 and 19^th /20^th November 2009 respectively.

Cerebrate Finance:

Cerebrate Finance is a live case study competition based on finance. It has two phases. In phase 1 an online quiz of 40 minutes based on knowledge of the field of finance will be conducted. Based on their performance in phase 1 six teams will be shortlisted for phase 2. In phase 2 A live case study will be provided to all shortlisted teams and they will be invited to present their cases to the judges on 19^th November in IIM Indore campus.

The online quiz of phase 1 will be launched on 7^th November 2009 and its results will be declared on 9^th November 2009. Phase 2 will start on 10^th November 2009 with the distribution of the case study to the selected teams and it will end on 19^th November 2009 with the final presentation by the groups.

Cerebrate Operations:

This event is being held for the first time looking at the growing importance of operations these days. It is a case study contest in operations field. Objective of the event is “To identify best talents in India in operations management area through soliciting solutions for live issues faced by corporate”.

The registration for this event has started. The case study will be available on the website from 29^th October 2009 and the final presentations by the groups will be made on 19^th November 2009.

Kalpavriksha has begun with a BANG. The Kalpa team is ecstatic about the overwhelming response that it has received this year! The gruelling task of selecting the top 20 teams from the 131 Social Business plans has been accomplished and the results have been declared on the website on 18^th October. Visit http://ahvan.in/ahvan09/index.html to know your whether your team has been one of the fortunate ones or not.

With international tie-up with Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (GSEC) of Foster School of Business and association with FINO as ‘Knowledge Partner’ and Cognizant as Sponsor, Kalpavriksha’09 promises to be bigger and better this year. Kalpavriksha moves a step ahead in assessing the social impact brought about by the business plans by introducing a new factor of “Social Impact Assessment”. Concurring with Ahvan’s theme of “Imagining India”, Kalpavriksha continues to be the torch-bearer of self-sustainable social entrepreneurship.

Testimonials from last year’s finalists speak tons about the success of Kalpavriksha.

“Kalpavriksha happens to be one of the most gruelling and testing B-plan competitions in India. Unlike other B-plan competitions whereby you can impress the judges with a 10 minute presentation to walk away with a prize, Kalpavriksha is almost a month long journey which ensures that only the best and genuine entrepreneurial minds manage to make the cut …”

“We have won many competitions, but the Kalpavriksha experience has been one of the most rewarding, even though we did not win anything! It tested our mettle in strategy, our team cohesiveness, the practicality of the plan among other things … Finally, we would like to say that if you want to rub shoulders with the likes of London School of Economics, Princeton University etc., Kalpavriksha is the shortest way to do it for an Indian team. So go for it!”

Team Kalpavriksha is looking forward to provide a platform to the path-breaking ideas of the nation’s young entrepreneurs and leave a lasting impact.

Kalpavriksha – it stands for the wish fulfilling tree. An ancient mythological concept from the ravens of India, it is the symbol of one’s identity and potential. It makes us probe inside our abilities and skills; actions and achievements and asks us a fundamental question- Can you fulfil the wishes of the poorest? It asks us if we have the desire to leave a lasting impact on the society. If so, Kalpavriksha ’09 is the place where you have to be.

First started in 2006, Kalpavriksha is the first of its kind event in India which brings about the amalgation of business principles and efforts. It aims towards societal upliftment and looks at becoming a sustained tool for change. With the best of brains slogging it out for the honours in previous Kalpavrikshas, we have seen some very innovative social B-plans. Now, the sceptical you may say that the talk is all good, but have any of these been put into practise? Well, we’d say that what differentiates Kalpavriksha – The number of projects which have actually been implemented and created an impact. And we promise you, that this is just the beginning.

This year, Kalpavriksha will be bigger and better than even before. We are becoming more inclusive, by including B-schools we did not have earlier, are campaigning more vigorously. We will have the best possible judges. We are having fantastic tie ups. We will give you the best hospitality. All you need to worry about is your Business idea.

Come, join Kalpavriksha ’09!

Kalpavriksha, one of the showcase events of IIM Indore’s annual fest ahvan,
invites budding social entrepreneurs to submit their B-Plans. Kalpavriksha
provides a platform for self-sustainable business plans which have a
measurable social impact.

The winning team and the runner up will receive prizes of Rs. 1, 20, 000 and
Rs. 70,000 respectively. The winner of Kalpavriksha ‘09 also secures a
direct entry into the finals of the ‘Global Social Entrepreneurship
Competition’ (GSEC) organized by the Foster School of Business, University
of Washington, U.S.A to be held in March, 2010!

Send in your entries by 11th October midnight to see your dreams come true.
Participants are required to register themselves online on the ahvan
website: www.ahvan.in . For further details, refer the Kalpavriksha Manual.

The past few days have been quite dull for the Ashwa team. The junior team selections that were planned for last week had to put off due to scheduling problems (I was rather looking forward to the chance of ordering people around). Also we had hoped to start the hunting process for the judges of Ashwa ‘09, but even that got delayed. All in all there are not too many updates to write about. I’ll instead use this space to talk about the posters that we’ve put out so far.

Posters have always been an important communication medium for Ashwa. The posters for the event over the years have always communicated a simple message: There is only one winner. This has been the guiding principle for developing all creative content related to the event. This year we started working on the posters quite early. The plan was to have a good pool of posters ready when we have to send them out to other B-Schools and also to generate some buzz within the campus.

This was the very first poster we put up. It was conceived as a teaser poster. With that aim the design was kept as simple as possible, using only the text for effect. The poster was made pretty much in one sitting with Nachiket and Srinath coming up with the excuses and me putting them in as fast as possible.

The poster started off as a very serious poster that was supposed to impress and inspire the audience. However after a few excuses we ran out of things to say that did not sound cliched. So we decided to take the easy way out and make it lighter in tone with some subtle and some not-so-subtle digs at people. In hindsight, it was a great idea to make it lighter because the response to this poster was amazing. The phenomenal number of nominations that we received for the junior team could be attributed in part to the success of this poster. This poster most probably would be sent out to other B-Schools at a later date with some changes to replace the IIM I insider references.

This is the poster that has been taking ages to get printed. This was planned as our recruitment poster for the junior team. We wanted to put it up before starting the selection process. However printing delays and paper shortages at the IT Dept has pushed back the poster’s launch. Hopefully (fingers crossed) we’d be able to get it printed today. The good thing is that since the selection process has also been postponed we might just make it in time.

This one is a purely internal poster. The idea was to represent what qualities are required to be part of the Ashwa team. Again we started out with the aim of making a serious poster and ended up taking liberal potshots at our senior team! (I think we should stop trying for serious posters altogether) We’d however like to place on record that all five of our seniors are Grade-A chappies. It was a wonderful experience working with them on Ashwa ‘08.

The response to this poster has been entirely restricted to the web till now, but even that has been very encouraging. The content writing took a long time with long discussions over mails on which is the best way to convey Raj’s fascination with Zingaro. We are also thinking about a poster that showcases the past winners of Ashwamedha but that’s just a idea at this point.

What do you think about our posters? Good, bad or downright ugly? Let us know by dropping off a comment below!