Confluence 2005: Where Ideas Converged
Confluence 2005 was graced by an unprecedented gallery of eminent speakers who generated an overwhelming response from the student community, academia and the corporate sector. Eminent speakers ranged from Mukesh Ambani, Kumarmangalam Birla, Deepak Parekh, Vijay Mallya, Sunil Mittal, J J Irani amongst others.
With participation through case contests and online submissions exceeding 5000, Confluence is now the largest business school meet in Asia Pacific.
Confluence 2006: The ‘India’ Phenomenon
In a globally integrated market place, trembles on the Sensex make Wall Street Journal news and Indian businessmen and women are widely respected across the world for leading the way and establishing world-class corporations.
The question no longer is, whether India will grow, but when and how fast. Confluence 2006 attempts to take a peek into this phenomenon, and what is driving it. With help from some of India’s most influential thinkers, policymakers and management practitioners we aim to gain insights into how the future of a country is envisioned and planned. Keeping this in mind, this year’s edition of Confluence has “The India Phenomenon” as its central theme.
With the aim of examining a broader range of business and economic issues cutting across functions, Confluence 2006 is structured as a series of sessions, each focusing on a carefully chosen theme – keeping in mind their relevance in today’s corporate world.
Managing Nations – The Growth Trajectory brings together a variety of stakeholders to indulge in a constructive dialogue to carve out India’s position in an “Emerging Asia”-Vision 2020 and beyond
New Horizons – Catalysts for Growth attempts to identify upcoming sectors which will drive growth in the new millennium
Advisory Committee – Confluence 2006
In order to promote involvement of industry representatives, Confluence pioneered the formation of an advisory committee. This includes some of the top business and industry leaders in India who provide counsel and guidance for the success of the event. The members of this year’s advisory committee include:
Mentor:
Deepak Parekh, Executive Chairman, HDFC Ltd
Committee Chairman:
Deepak Satwalekar, MD & CEO, HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co. Ltd
Committee Members:
Ajay Piramal, Chairman, Nicholas Piramal India Ltd.
Aroon Purie, Chairman, The India Today Group & TV Today Network Ltd.
Bakul H. Dholakia, Director, IIM A
J J Irani, Director, Tata Sons
Jerry Rao, CEO, Mphasis
Keki Dadiseth, International Advisor-India, Goldman Sachs
N. Ravichandran, Faculty Advisor, Confluence
N Srinivasan, Advisor, CII
Naina Lal Kidwai, CEO, HSBC India
Subir Raha, Ex-Chairman & MD, ONGC
Sumant Sinha, CFO, The Aditya Birla Group
Distinguished Speakers – Confluence 2006
The speakers who would grace the occasion this time around are:
(Updated as of November 15, 2006)
A Vellayan, Vice Chairman, Murugappa Group
Ajay Piramal, Chairman, Nicholas Piramal India Ltd.
Amitabh Chaudhry, MD & CEO, Infosys BPO
Arun Maira, Chairman, The Boston Consulting Group, India
Arvind Mahajan, Executive Director, Advisory Services, KPMG
Ashwin Dani, Vice-Chairman & MD, Asian Paints Ltd.
Douglas Baillie, CEO, Hindustan Lever Ltd.
Tan Sri Datuk G Gnanalingam, Executive Chairman, Westports Malaysia
K Raghavendra Rao, Founder MD, Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
Kishore Biyani, CEO, Future Group and MD, Pantaloon Retail India Ltd.
Kishor Chaukar, MD, Tata Industries Ltd.
N Srinivasan, Advisor, Confederation of Indian Industry
Sudha Murthy, Chairperson & Trustee, Infosys Foundation
Events – What’s in store at this year’s Confluence
LECTURE SERIES AND PANEL DISCUSSIONS
Each year Confluence plays host to a slew of luminaries from the worlds of business and politics who come here to engage with young minds and spark new ideas. Previous speakers have included dignitaries such diverse walks of life as Chief Ministers, corporate tycoons, entrepreneurs, social activists and many more.
BIZQUIZITIVE
The business quiz
Buzzers, bonus scores, just in time answers…the spirit of quizzing has been captivating minds across generations and countries. And to celebrate this spirit, Confluence 2006 presents the biggest Business Quiz in this part of the world.
With eminent quizmaster Joy Bhattacharjya playing host for the evening, BizQuizitive promises an adrenaline rush to a live audience of over a thousand people
MANAGEMENT GAMES
The Management Games will simulate business environments in an attempt to replicate live decision making in business. They will be a mix of on-line as well as off-line games. In the past, management games have been designed on various themes like innovation and creative marketing among others.
The largest corporate business plan competition in India.
Acknowledged as the largest corporate business plan competition of its kind in India, MasterPlan is here again in a new avatar. MasterPlan provides participants an ideal forum to run their own show by scanning favorable business opportunities under constraints, brainstorming hard to generate and evaluate options, and finally devising a strategy providing the perfect balance between risks and returns.
Themes
This year’s edition of MasterPlan is being organized around 5 themes in order to better simulate the kind of real-life opportunities and challenges that an institutional entrepreneur faces.
· Alternative Energies
· Technologies for the Future Organization
· Rural India
· Media and Entertainment
· Life Sciences
The response to MasterPlan this year has been stupendous, exceeding last years’ number of entries despite a new sector-wise format. International participation has also increased, with over 15 teams sending in entries.
Whilst some of the plans proposed highly technical solutions such as a liquefied salt based water purification process, a co-operative biogas grid; others targeted the online market with propositions for e-learning and blog related services. One all-female team from SPJIMR has come up with a unique franchisee based business model for marketing beauty related products and services. Entertainment centers with cricket as the underlying theme and a chain of rural tourism resorts were also among the other interesting plans that were short listed.
GLOBALIZATION CHALLENGE
Businesses today are being buffeted by major gales of change. In such a dynamic environment, fast growth is imperative to survive in the corporate landscape. In a fast globalizing world, companies are going on a war. Every day Indian Giants are in the news buying out large foreign companies. The Globalization Challenge will try to explore the ingredients that go into a successful merger and acquisition. This event would be an Acquisition Strategy Game that would allow competing teams to bid for potential targets across sectors. It would try and simulate the acquisition process, through a process of bidding and counter-bidding.
THINK. COMMIT. DO.
The Consulting paradigm is changing. With clients becoming more demanding, the limits are being stretched in terms of both innovative strategy formulation and speedy execution. The success of a management consultant is increasingly being measured in terms of how clearly one Thinks, how Committed one is to one’s thought process and how Does one action that into measurable results. These are some of the attributes that will be demonstrated by the successful participants in “Think. Commit. Do.” The workshop will have three rounds: Blitzkrieg (Elimination), Laissez Faire (Interactive and Quizzing), and Checkmate (The Case Presentation).
ANVESHAN
The entrepreneurial plan contest.
Anveshan, the flagship event of the entrepreneurship club at IIM A – Entre, is to be conducted in partnership with Confluence this year. It is a unique business plan event judged by eminent entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and investors. It was officially launched on the 30th of August with invitations extended to students from leading management and engineering colleges to submit preliminary entrepreneurial plans. It generated a tremendous response with over 170 entries pouring in from around the country and abroad.
The focus of Anveshan lies in grooming budding entrepreneurs and opening avenues for them to explore their dreams. With this is mind, it includes an extensive two month-long mentorship under entrepreneurs and investors for the selected finalists.
LIVESTOCK
LiveStock 2006 is an online trading game that will offer 60 teams an opportunity to dabble with stocks on the Bombay Stock Exchange and make tons of money. It is an event for the budding fund managers and investors from top B-Schools apply their trading strategies and market acumen and earn high returns with a nominal investment on their part. Our sponsoring partners, ICICIdirect.com and Ratnakar Securities will put in an additional capital of up to 12 times the student’s investment and help them achieve phenomenal real returns.
Livestock was restricted to participants from India only. Nonetheless over 200 entries were received. After the elimination rounds held in mid-October, 40 shortlisted teams set up demat accounts and began trading on the 13th November. After another round of elimination the top 20 teams will then continue in the competition with double the earlier capital provided in the initial ratio by the partner and the participants. When the contest ends on the 22nd of November, the top 3 teams will share the prize money of Rs. 80,000 as well as share a part of their profits
MOUSETRAP
Mousetrap, Confluence’s online strategy game, used actual industry data to simulate a live business environment. Participants had to use their business acumen to compete with the best B-schools students all over the world. The goal was to gain the largest market share and wealth possible by running a conglomerate of companies and to nurture them using pure business logic.
This year, Mousetrap went international with total prize money of $3,400. Over 550 teams competed with 52 international teams amongst them. The 45 top teams (including 10 international teams) which qualified after the preliminaries will now make their way to Confluence 2006 with sponsored travel and accommodation and get an opportunity to participate in contests here.
Participants
We have extended invitation to 60 domestic schools and expect approximately 360 sponsored participants alone. In addition, we expect around 50 people from other colleges to visit Confluence and listen to the speakers. Also we expect a local attendance of approximately 100 Amdavadis attending the daily talks by various speakers. Figures given at present are at best conservative in nature.
We have also received a very enthusiastic response from international schools. We have 4 new international schools participating for the first time in Confluence – Sungkyunkwan University (Korea), NUS (Singapore), Oxford University (UK) and Birmingham Business School (UK). We have a total of 55 participants from international schools :
| Asia | |
| Sungkyunkwan University | Korea |
| CEIBS | China |
| NUS | Singapore |
| NTU | Singapore |
| Europe | UK |
| Oxford | Spain |
| ESADE | UK |
| Birmingham business school | |
| Australia | |
| Brisbane graduate school of business | |
| United States | |
| Ross school of Business, University of Michigan | |
| Haas school of business, University of California, | Berkley |
| Krannert school of management, Purdue university |
For further details or clarifications, please feel free to write to at:
[email protected]