27/07/2015

27/07/2015; 03:21:

And, it's been three eventful days, here at Planet-I!

24th morning began with classes as usual; Trois- the start-up by 3 students of the PGP-2 Batch- held the second day of its exhibition of suiting and fabric- they had the option of both custom-altered ready-made suits and tailor-made suits stitched to order.
The Sports Committee meanwhile prepared and uploaded a video that brings forth the idea that sports are an essential part of life and can be very well managed in sync with academics and everything else that goes on at Planet-I.

Branded- the most awaited event of the Marketing Club was held at 10 p.m. in the Old Auditorium. It consisted of two rounds- nearly half the batch turned up to participate- the auditorium was nearly full! The first round was a written 20-question quiz that tested mainly general awareness in the marketing space- including logos, taglines and new products. The top 6 teams (including ours!) qualified for the final round where in a news piece had to be used as the basis for building an advertisement for any product- the sample shown depicted the infamous incident where Suarez bit an Italian player during a game and the subsequent advertisement that Snickers developed- ‘Tastes much better than Italian’. Similar news pieces including the one where parents scaled walls in Bihar to hand out answers to students writing their Board exams and a corruption scandal were part of the challenge. The top 3 teams were picked, based on their idea and execution- these three are now required to get FaceBook ‘likes’ for their video-taped performance- and, there’s prize money being handed out to the winners! The event was very interesting and well-conducted- I’m sure that the number of interested applicants for the Marketing Club has gone up at least 2-fold after this!

25th morning began with classes; post-lunch, we headed to attend the afternoon session of ‘Colloquium- The Annual Business Conclave’. The theme for this year’s event is ‘E-commerce in India: From Bricks to Clicks’. There was a rather interesting Panel Discussion centred around the idea ‘The advent of Omni-Channel Retail in India’. Nearly everyone agreed that it is but an inevitable happening that is likely to take over retail space in the near future even though a lot of challenges still stand to be overcome.
This was followed by ‘Elevator Pitch’, the B-Plan event with a difference- the participants had just 2 minutes - the duration of an elevator ride’ to put forth their ideas to a panel of judges- the ideas ranged from a rental website to a price-comparison website to an adventure-tourism website. Of course, given the theme of the event, all the ideas were e-commerce based. The event ended close to 5 p.m. post which I headed to my room and proceeded to fall asleep. I only woke up early on Sunday morning, right in time for the next session of the Business Conclave. Meanwhile, I missed out on a practice for the performance that we’re preparing as part of the Section Wars. A couple of sections have performed flash-mobs to increase their visibility, in the run up to the event. We’re looking at having something, sometime soon.

26th morning began with Day 2 of Colloquium at the Old Audi. There were 4 guest lectures- a personal entrepreneurship story; the future of affiliate marketing; the websites in the travel-related e-commerce space and the importance of Big Data Analytics. A panel discussion on ‘Price wars and discounts: race to the bottom or the ultimate winning strategy’ and a workshop on Big Data Analytics were held after lunch. A Business Quiz was held at 6 p.m. The winners of all the events will be announced and felicitated during the closing ceremony that’ll be held on 27th evening.

Section E (or some part of Section E to be more specific) gathered in the FPM Common Room to work on our dance & music performances for 2nd August- that’s when the final showdown for Section Wars is due to happen!

Evening was spent discussing Atharv’s progress and trying out Globe@I’s new ‘healthy menu- for their rolls, they’ve shifted to using atta instead of maida and they promise extra fresh ingredients.

At 10 p.m., the Merchand-I Club held their event, ‘Retail Saga’ which was very well-received. Some dinner and some gossip later, I headed to my room and inaugurated my new laptop! (the same one that I’d procured about 10 days earlier, as part of the InfraComm bulk deal).

And, the keyboard is very nice and here’s to my first piece composed on it!!