Consulting Conclave 1.0

As a part of its relentless pursuit to foster the enterprising culture, Consulting and Entrepreneurship Club of IIM Raipur organized Consulting Conclave 1.0 on Saturday, 27^th August, 2016.

In the words of Jay Abraham, “You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don’t see them.” Consultants are the people who are entrusted to solve the above problem.

The objective of the Consulting Conclave was two-fold. Firstly, to bring together corporate leaders and consultants from varied sectors of the industry to discuss relevant themes of consulting along with academicians. Secondly, to conduct workshops to develop key skills needed for a consulting role.

The conclave began with a lecture by Mr V. Niju, Director of Frost & Sullivan, on the topic ‘Consulting in the Indian Perspective’. His words were illustrative of his 12 years of experience in Strategy Consulting and Market Research. He also shared the lessons he learnt while working with clients in India, Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

After that, a thought provoking panel discussion on ‘Consulting to gain Competitive Advantage’ followed. The panel consisted of Mr Rohit Nasa, Pricipal of BMGI India, Mr Ajay Muttreja, Advisor to Chairman, Tecnova India, and Ms Pragya Singh, Vice President of Technopark Advisors. The discussion was moderated by Dr Sanjeev Parashar, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Raipur.

Mr. Rohit holds an M.B.A. from one of the top European business school, ESADE. He has an experience of 13 years in managing strategy, marketing and operations assignments for Retail, CPG, E-Commerce and Financial sectors with on-ground experience in Asia, Europe and the USA. Ms. Pragya, also, is a management consulting professional with over 12 years of experience in Strategy consulting, commercial due diligence, Business development and Market research in India and Middle East. She holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) from IIM Ahmedabad and a bachelor’s degree in Chemical engineering from IIT, Delhi.

The event concluded with an engaging lecture by Mr Ajay Muttreja, where he shared his experiences as a consultant. He has 35 years of management experience in India-entry strategy consulting, cross-border public and private sector partnership development, business transformation and complex technology transfers. He has enabled more than 1,000 multi-national companies to achieve transformational growth and long-term success in India.

The guests also took part in an interactive session with the budding entrepreneurs who came to attend the event from all over the country. The young entrepreneurs gained useful insight about how to use consulting as a tool in order to gain competitive advantage in the ferociously competitive start-up landscape. The conclave also presented them a chance to build a wider network.

With the Management Consulting market set to be valued at $350 billion globally, the consulting industry has seen a steep up-shoot in the past few years. The firms globally are using innovative Go-to-Market strategies, surveying and understanding the target market and using out-of-the box brand communication strategies. In this era of growing consulting roles, the students can benefit from analysing the trends of the consulting world, understanding the mind-set of a consultant and developing key skills needed to excel at the role.

Consulting and Entrepreneurship Club of IIM Raipur is committed towards its aim to create entrepreneurial opportunities for students with innovative ideas. CEC Club can be reached at cec@iimrapur.ac.in. Those interested can also get in touch with the club on its Facebook page.