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.