Highlights from ABC's Monopoly'22 (Not the Board Game)
In today’s edition of Business Bytes, we bring you an exclusive coverage of Ashoka Business Club’s first inter-university event, Monopoly. Whether you’re an extracurricular overachiever or an academic busy bee with no time for events, we’re sure you won’t be able to stay away from other ABC events after reading about this one!
The Ashoka Business Club held its first inter-university event Monopoly, on Saturday, 19th of November. The event was attended by top colleges from all over the country including LSR, Ramjas, Hindu, Hansaraj, JGU among others and followed a Mergers & Acquisitions theme set in the alternate protein industry. (The alternate protein industry basically refers to plant-based and food-based technologies to replace animal-based protein, an industry that is seeing a significant increase in demand due to the rise of veganism and flexitarian diets.)
To help the contestants learn more about how the corporate world goes about an M&A deal - for example, what are its future growth prospects, how well can the company being merged or acquired be incorporated into the business of the parent firm, Monopoly followed a 2-round format – a growth and an acquisition segment each.
The growth round required the teams to solve a task – the first part involved an elevator pitch along with a marketing campaign while the second task posed an industry-wide crisis. The idea behind these tasks was to challenge their critical thinking skills and help them understand how firms react to market shocks and plan their recovery trajectory. Each task round resulted in a round of acquisitions where the top-performing companies acquired the smaller companies. While five companies were acquired by 5 of the top performers, remaining 2 companies were merged to form one single company.
By the final round of the competition, the 12 companies came down to 6 teams of 8 each which took part in a cryptic hunt revolving around money, profitability and growth. The joint team of Ramjas College, Delhi University and Ashoka University bagged the 1st prize with a cash prize of ₹20k!
