XLRI team wins Tata Business Leasdership Award 2010

Jamshedpur (Sept 22, The Pioneer): The Tata Business Leasdership Award 2010 has a new winner. And it is none other than the team from XLRI comprising Aditi Shukla, Paresh Dhokad, Rishabh Chindalia and Sri Ganesh TV who are all senior business management students at XLRI, Jamshedpur.

The Tata Business Leadership Award or TBLA as it is popularly known comprised four rounds, the first of which was conducted at the various campuses around the country. TBLA was introduced by TAS in 2002, and has been held every year since then in select business schools ‘to bring the best student minds together to take up a business challenge.’

This is usually a strategic problem or situation relevant to the house of Tata. TBLA 2010 held across six campuses: IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Kolkata, IIM Lucknow, SPJIMR Mumbai and XLRI Jamshedpur. The winning team gets the prestigious Tata Business Leadership Award Rolling Trophy and a host of other prizes where the first prize is `one lakh, a TAS process shortlist, second prize is `50,000, and third prize is `25,000.

The best of the teams from all TAS campuses and group companies participate in the contest, which is judged by young Tata talent at the campuses and by senior business leaders in the final round.

According to the administrators of the event, “The award underlines the commitment of the Tata Group to promoting and encouraging future leaders.”

The theme for TBLA 2010 was “A Billion Touch — point Business Idea” where all team were required to identify a business idea based on the above theme, in other words, the theme of the competition was to conceptualise a TATA business that does not currently exist and which has the capability “to touch a billion lives”.

The winning group conceptualised ‘TATA Environmental Services’. Sri Ganesh, a member of the winning team said, “We came up with this business idea because social class or economic strata pollution affects the vitality of life of everyone in India. Hence a company which can tackle this monumental problem would really touch a billion lives.” This idea was chosen to be the best amongst those presented and thus the XLRI team ‘QED’ was proclaimed as winners of TBLA 2010, a first for this prestigious institute.