On November 9, YES BANK Transformation Series – India’s largest case study challenge – crowned Team ‘Easy Company’ from IIM Shillong as the winner of the 6th edition of YES BANK Transformation Series at the Grand Finale held at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi.
In addition to pre-placement interview opportunities with YES BANK and the privilege of working on a case set by the Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog; the winners from IIM Shillong will receive a prize money of INR 5 lakh; first runner up – IIM Bangalore will take home INR 3 lakh and the second runner up Indian School of Business, Hyderabad a prize of INR 2 lakh. An aggregate of INR 16 lakh in prize money was distributed across the 15 finalists of the challenge.

The Grand Finale was attended by Ramanathan Ramanan, mission director, Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog and Shaurya Doval, director, India Foundation.

Launched in 2010, YES BANK Transformation Series is a one-of-a-kind platform that offers students across the world an opportunity to work on real-life industry challenges faced by the financial sector. Over the years, the focus has been on various disruptive concepts such as digital financial inclusion and complete digitalisation. So far, more than 75,000 students have participated in this challenge, making it India’s largest case study challenge.

This year, YES BANK partnered with 10 case partners for the 1st round, including IBM, Nasscom, CISCO, Microsoft, Morph.ai, Numberz, Redcarpet, Rupeeseed, Intellecap and Singapore International Foundation.

The finalists of this year’s challenge were from IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, XLRI Jamshedpur, IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Indore, IIFT Delhi, ISB Hyderabad, FMS Delhi, NITIE Mumbai, IIM Shillong, NMIMS Mumbai, IIM Ranchi and Goa Institute of Management.

The teams presented their ideas to an esteemed jury comprising policymakers, doyens of Indian Inc. and academia such as Ramanathan Ramanan, mission director, Atal Innovation Mission; Aditya Khanna, MD & CEO, ART Special Situations Finance (India) Pvt. Ltd.; Karan Bajwa, MD, IBM India; Varsha Tagare, MD, Qualcomm Ventures; Nikhil Rungta, MD, Intuit India; Nandita Mathur, editor, Mint; Satyavati Berera, COO, PwC; Deepti Dutt, director- Smart Cities, Microsoft India; Sanjeev Malhotra, CEO, Centre of Excellence-IoT, Nasscom.

Speaking about the competition, Rana Kapoor, managing director & CEO, YES BANK said, “The Indian economy is witnessing a phase characterised by design, innovation and creativity-led entrepreneurship, against the backdrop of supportive government policies and favourable demographics. At YES BANK, it is our constant endeavour to interact with youth and channelise their entrepreneurial spirit in the right direction, with an emphasis on design thinking and innovation. The YES BANK Transformation Series presents a unique opportunity for students to provide innovative solutions to real life challenges facing India Inc. today, by allowing them to take up the role of business leaders and test their mettle against the world, thereby showcasing their innovative thinking. In the sixth edition of this case study challenge, in partnership with Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, Transformation Series provides a unique opportunity for young innovators to be a part of a national challenge and I am looking forward to the solutions shared by them to transform India into a Smart Agri Nation.”

“There is a great opportunity to leverage technology in increasing agri productivity, farmer productivity, farmer incomes, reducing costs, reducing climatic dependencies, improving storage and distribution, improving agri-logistics management and supply chain management, food research leveraging technologies such as IoT, big data and analytics, preservation technologies, precision agriculture technologies, irrigation water management and so on. NITI’s/AIM’s vision is to accelerate the adoption of these technologies for the growth of farmer incomes as well as job creations. In this regard, the Atal Innovation Mission synergies with the YES BANK Transformation Series provides a platform for increased collaboration, incentivisation and reach to thousands of potential innovators of this country, addressing the smart challenges posed for the benefit of the nation,” said Ramanathan.

On the occasion, YES BANK also launched a case study authored by IIM-C on SIMsePAY, a unique innovation that allows any account holder to do money transfers, pay utility bills and other mobile banking services, without the need for smart phones or internet.

Mumbai headquartered YES BANK is India’s fifth largest private sector bank with a pan India presence across all the 29 states and 7 Union Territories of India.