ITC’s Interrobang sees nation’s next-gen come up with top business ideas
Multi-business conglomerate ITC has concluded the 13th Season of its unique campus engagement initiative – ‘Interrobang?!: ITC on Campus’. Students from 18 premier Management Institutes across India engaged with ITC in an interactive learning experience over a period of 4 months. Interrobang 2023 concluded with a Grand Finale event at ITC Sonar in Kolkata wherein the top eight student teams from premier management campuses (namely IIM Mumbai, MDI Gurgaon, MICA Ahmedabad, NMIMS Mumbai, TISS Mumbai and XLRI, Jamshedpur) presented their case solutions to senior leaders from ITC, followed by a prize distribution ceremony and students’ interaction with the leadership over the gala dinner. Other participating management campuses in this year’s edition of Interrobang included IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, FMS Delhi, ISB, among others.
IIM Mumbai showed its might in the supply chain stream, emerging as the winner and another team from IIM Mumbai claiming the runner-up spot. In the Human Resources stream, TISS Mumbai’s team bagged the top spot while the team from XLRI Jamshedpur finished runner-up. In the marketing segment, the team of NMIMS Mumbai clinched the title while the team of XLRI Jamshedpur was presented the runner-up award.
Interrobang, which literally means a cool non-standard punctuation mark ‘?!’, intended to express both the interrogative (?) and the exclamatory or an ‘aha’ moment(!), aims to provide students precisely this experience with ITC on Campus – one where they can interact with ITC leaders to gather rich insights about ITC’s business best practices and learn extensively through ITC’s success stories and achievements.
During Interrobang 2023, ITC engaged extensively with students in a meaningful learning exchange driven by three key pillars – the ITC Interrobang Case Challenge, InterroJam Campus Sessions as well as the Grand Finale. The Interrobang Case Challenge provided an opportunity for students to work on live business problems in the fields of Marketing, Human Resources and Supply Chain Management. As part of the process, participants were mentored by ITC Managers to align their solutions with the business context. The top solutions will win Pre-Placement Interview Opportunities at ITC for flagship Assistant under Training (AUT) program.
The 13th Season received 1000+ student teams registering with over 350+ business ideas and 3000+ students participating on 18 campuses. This year the cases focused on varies challenges like demand forecasting, premiumization, entering new segments, D2C, to call out a few. Over the years, the Interrobang has received over 4400 business ideas. Many of these ideas have found their way in execution. For example, the Mangaldeep App case study of Season 11 lent the idea of creating personalization through a “habit hook” on the App which is now under implementation. The second unique pillar of Interrobang 2023 were the InterroJam Sessions on Campus, where senior business leaders shared best practices at ITC with the students. The Grand Finale being the third pillar of the challenge invited the top eight teams to make their final pitch to senior managers at ITC Sonar, Kolkata.
Speaking about Interrobang?! 2023, Amitav Mukherji, Head-Corporate Human Resources, ITC Limited, said, “Over the years, ITC’s flagship campus-engagement initiative Interrobang?! has evolved into a differentiated and sought-after platform that fosters cross-fertilisation of knowledge and learning. The programme has so far covered over 1 lakh students across 20 management institutes. The enthusiastic and large-scale participation at Interrboang?! form budding managers is testimony to the programme’s impact in stimulating creative energy, competitive intensity and strategic thinking among the country’s promising future managers. As with every year, this year too, the event provided ITC managers the unique opportunity to interact and engage closely with the students, while encouraging them to think out of the box and apply their best minds to solve diverse and intriguing business case challenges.”