Inside X-Biz: An Autobiographical Note -Divanshu Dubey, PGPX 2012-13, IIM Ahmedabad During the first term, five

of us PGPX participants got elected by the class into the X-Biz Committee. Our program (PGPX) is just seven years old, and the event organised by us Connexions is even younger. X-Biz, a part of Connexions just started last year when a few of the students in the previous batch decided to hold a business plan competition as an additional event during connexions. Pre-decision Phase We were motivated and decided to pursue the agenda to hold a business plan competition on the lines of the previous year in earnest. As a part of our plan we went to see famous entrepreneur and Prof. Sunil Handa. The plan was to get him to conduct a workshop on writing business plans. But he gave a twist to the whole thing. He pointed out that a business plan competition was a "me too" event and was unlikely to enhance the image of PGPX, which we conceded was our ultimate objective. Then he asked us what this image that we are talking of was? The brand PGPX was conceived by the founders as the power house that will fuel the Indian growth story. In an economy that grew at 9% companies would grow at 15% or more and would require experienced managers from outside (as compared to just company grown ones) to support such a level of growth. PGPX was designed to supply just the right people to act as catalysts to exponentially increase the growth. So the question was what format we adopt in our event that propagates this kind of an image. The approach we adopted was based on a iterative process (again suggested by Prof. Handa). We first asked ourselves What did we really expect from such an event. We also discussed this with our fellow participants and alumni. We found a few connecting themes, revisited the process to get some convergence thereby reaching a conclusion regarding the kind of event we would like to have. The underlying theme of our exercise was to arrive on the positioning of PGPX that should help us plan on an event that would actually achieve the aim of building the PGPX brand. One striking theme was supplied by an Alumni of the pioneer batch- Ajay Sharma. His brief message read: The one word theme should be 'Rejuvenation'. PGPX qualified resource should act as the 'steroid' injection for any organisation..be it ramp up, defining and architecting an inflection point, be it a startup, etc... On sharing this with others I found the theme to be a good eye-catcher. The final theme chosen for Connexions was actually very similar. Our challenge was to come-up with a theme for the event based on such a positioning. Our committee decided to brain-storm for ideas and soon come-up with a theme for X-Biz. A few competitive formats that we came up with involved using game theory, cricket based formats involving gaming, and so on. During interactions with alumni I learned that an event involving industry which in some way show-cased our talent would be ideal. Sometime when these discussions were going on I came across an article on FT about European Banks using war-games. I was enthusiastic about this idea having attended and organised similar events in the past. I knew the power of war gaming, and its value as a tool for strategic decision making. One of the instances that comes to mind was the decision by Musharraf to join the Global War against Terror post 9/11. This

was thus my contribution to the idea for X-Biz. I came up with the idea of a simulation game or war game, to simulate the Indian economy. We then discussed these ideas with our program chair Prof. Satish Deodhar. Dr. Deodhar then guided us towards Prof. Shailendra Raj Mehta who had considerable experience in simulations. He was very enthusiastic about a war-game based event. One of the subject ideas doing rounds was FDI in Retail (then in the back-burner). He actually guided us through the details of the process and made a few suggestions using the example of FDI in retail. These ideas generally seemed to stick with us. He also gave us the idea of having an in-house designed simulation game that can be coupled along with this, since some of us wanted it to be a competition where a team wins something. During these deliberations I realised that the over-arching subject of rejuvenating the Indian economy would be too wide to handle for an event like ours. In the mean time we also met some other Professors who were very helpful. Prof. Viswanath Pingali told us about MarkStratTM. We were then leaning towards a simulation based game. We were given the contacts of a 2009 (PGP) alumnus, John Cherian by Prof. Handa. John had started his own enterprise based on a simulation games. We tried out one of the simulations offered by him and realised that the time and preparation required may not gel with our requirements. Internal Marketing Phase As a result of this process we finally zeroed in on conducting a business simulation game along with an economic war game akin to what was suggested by Prof. Shailendra Mehta. After a few rounds of discussions and deliberations with many professors and experts we decided to narrow the scope of the topic. We adopted FDI in multi-brand retail in India as the subject for our event, both for the war game and simulation. There were many times when we were not sure about the event and since the initial meetings were rather infrequent, I had to again and again convince the members of the team and re-explain how the event would actually unfold. But thankfully we stuck to the format for X-Biz. We also faced some hurdles trying to tell the other committees about the event and since we were in untested waters some of our friends were rightly uncomfortable with the format. This problem resurfaced when we invited people from the industry to participate in various roles in our event. Everyone I spoke to had to be explained in some detail about the format and had to be convinced to attend. We then had repeated rounds of meetings with all the professors and tried to get contacts to invite for the event. Although we had confirmations from many individuals, some of whom later cancelled, we managed to get a reasonably good show running. While we were not every confident regarding the desired participation level a few weeks before the event one of our committee members Neekunj Mehta got an input from his father regarding Prof. Sukhpal Singh who was very helpful in terms of providing links to his contacts we could invite. Neekunj also took the lead in Pursuing Prof. Piyush Kumar Sinha, chairman of the Centre for Retailing at IIM Ahmedabad. With Prof. Sinha immense benefit accrues to our team in terms of getting suitable participants. All team members, especially Dhiraj Ramakrishnan pursued all leads in earnest to ensure maximum participation.

We also got help from our alumni in terms of leads for participants. Notable amongst them was Senthil Govindan who single-handedly provided us with leads to almost all industry participants required to provide strategic mentorship to the teams. Economic War Game: We had six teams comprising of PGPX students participating in the event. They represented various stakeholders directly impacted by FDI in retail through role-play and stated their perceived positions. We got stake holders such as farmer representatives and traders, supply-chain professionals, actual players from the retail industry, academia & other industry professionals with a strategic background to discuss the role-play and related issues. A wide variety of objectives and learning emerged out of the role-plays, which was the objective of this exercise. Hopefully, the outcome of the war game would be close to what happens in reality. Business Simulation Game: As mentioned earlier we had people from industry with experience that provided them with a strategic perspective, who acted as mentors for the participating teams. They were also required to mentor the teams for the simulation game. The simulation game required that all the teams play-out the scenarios as a foreign or domestic organised retailer in the market given FDI is in. The simulation was designed in house by the finance wiz and simulation champion of our Committee, Ravi Kalle. This was based on the broad guidelines on FDI in retail. God Lies in the Details When we first embarked on this journey, little did we know that the government would actually announce FDI in multi-brand retail. This gave a fillip to our event and greatly increased its relevance. There were a lot of issues to handle which we all took on as they came up, with a little help from our friends. One of our team members, Yogesh Kohli, contributed greatly to the design of the logo and posters, as well as the web related promotional activities. He also took charge of the logistics issues. Not to mention the other committees, teams, and fellow PGPX participants who helped us in various capacities. Thanks to them our event was the success that it was. The X- Factor A couple of things worth mentioning that really helped make X-Biz a success. One was the participation of the audience. As far as the PGPX participants were concerned, except for the ones participating in X-Biz the presence others in the audience was likely to be minimal, since the event was scheduled at such a time (4 pm). Also, we were sure that the event would be delayed and that another event had been scheduled from 6:30 pm. The cavalry came to the rescue- literally! The participants of the Armed Forces Program participated in good numbers, asked a lot of questions and blessed X-Biz with a full house. The other instance of Lady Luck smiling at us was Prof. Shailendra Mehta agreeing to Anchor the event, on the eve of the event. We had received confirmation from an eminent media personality to anchor the event, but the person cancelled at the last moment. It proved to be a blessing in disguise. Fortunately for us, we had a meeting scheduled with Prof. Mehta at 8:30 pm in the night. We told

him about our predicament and he readily agreed to anchor for us. Anyone who witnessed X-Biz would agree that it would not have been the same without him.