A new student organization in the Naveen Jindal School of Management aimed at supporting students interested in becoming product managers recently held its inaugural case competition designed to prepare them for the job market.
The Product League’s April 3 event featured four finalists selected by club officers from a larger field. Students who competed were given a problem to solve and were asked to design a digital solution.
Shalini Dinesh, senior product manager at Walmart and a competition judge, provided the problems. Other judges were Dr. Vasant Gondhalekar, a lecture in the Jindal School and the team’s faculty adviser, and Paul Nichols, an associate professor of Practice in the Jindal School’s Organizations, Strategy and International Management Area.
Competitions such as this one are important to give students a real-world experience, Dinesh said.
“No matter what they read in the books, real business doesn’t operate that way,” she said. “This provides the students with an opportunity to experience a real-world situation and they can rehearse their presentations.”
Some of the things the judges looked for in the presentations were good analysis, communication skills and tangible solutions.
“If you don’t know how to communicate it doesn’t matter what you know,” Nichols said.
Three of the presentations focused on solving the problem of long wait times in emergency rooms. One opted to present a digital solution to fix quality issues in a manufacturing company factory.
Team Maverick, comprised of graduate students Akshay Verma (information technology and management) and Vinod Patil (MBA), placed first. They were awarded $90. Their solution for long ER wait times was a digital platform that can be easily integrated with hospital systems and linked with a customer-facing app with patient-focused features.
Second place was a solo participant, Sri Kiran Pramoda Rani, an ITM graduate student. She received $60. Her solution for long ER wait times was “Medminder,” a digital platform that, among other things, allows users to input symptoms and receive guidance on the severity of their condition and get recommended steps. The feature is aimed at reducing the number of non-emergency patients being seen in the ER.
“We decided on doing this competition because when students seek internships, they are often provided a problem and are asked to present their solution in front of company executives,” said Apoorv Chowdhry, an ITM graduate student who is the club’s vice president. “This kind of competition allows them to practice those presentations.”
After each solution was presented, the judges offered suggestions to each participant to help them make improvements.
The Product League was launched about a year ago and currently has more than 100 members. The club provides several learning opportunities for its members, including guest speakers, mentorships, networking events, workshops, speaker events, case competitions and immersive training opportunities.
“We want to make sure everything we do benefits the students,” said president Manish Ramchandani, a business analytics graduate student. “We are very interested to have more participation in the club.”
Membership is $10 per semester and benefits include working with a network of product experts, including experienced product managers, entrepreneurs, seasoned marketers and designers.
“All of the participants should be congratulated for coming here and participating in this competition,” Dinesh said. “It isn’t an easy thing to do.”
