IIM Indore PGP (Batch 2014-16) students Shruti Choudhary and Shalini Bhardwaj have won the first IBS-BLoC Case Study Contest, presented by Hidesign. Competing with over 50 teams from a variety of B-schools, including IIM-A, IIM-B and ISB, IIM Indore team won the first prize and received gift vouchers worth 25,000 INR from premium leather goods brand.
The caselet ‘Should Cairn India merge with Vedanta?’ was developed by the ICFAI Business School’s (IBS) CaseResearch Centre by Hadiya Faheem, a freelance case writer, and Professor G.V. Muralidhara, Dean, Case Research Centre. The case required students to don the hat of a mutual fund manager and vote on the proposed merger of the two companies. Backed by a well-argued analysis, Shruti and Shalini concluded that the merger would not be successful, and voted against it.
Professor D. Satish, Associate Professor, IBS Hyderabad, who analysed all the entries, said the winners’ analysis put the case in context and also took into consideration the market developments.
‘The case stood out from the rest, given its link to concepts and finance theory. The case analysis was built well on a model that analysed the possibility of success of the merger on a time-frame. Another important aspect was that the analysis of synergy was backed up by quantitative financial analysis, especially focusing on the cash-flows and trend in the cash equivalents, which are important from this merger point of view’, Professor Satish mentioned.