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AB InBev BUD Challenge: An Experience Of Crafting A Craft Beer

Oct 29, 2019 | 5 minutes |

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AB InBev is the world’s largest beer brewer & the second-largest in India and their mission is to bring people together for a better world. THE BUD CHALLENGE – an inter B-School business challenge allows students from all specializations to compete and showcase their brilliant ideas to help solve key business challenges spanning across the domains of Marketing, Strategy & Sustainability. Team Corona Pyaar Hai from MICA emerged as the National Winners of AbInBev The B.U.D Challenge 2019. The team comprised of Jeffery Modak, Samriti Goel, and Vivek J. Here's their story of success straight from the horse's mouth. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was the first competition of the season and I (Samriti Goel) was pretty excited about it. What is cooler than working on a beer company, that too from the dry state of Gujarat? The competition was rolled out in the last week of June when we were not even on campus as MICA’s Term begin in 1st week of July. I was talking to Vivek about something else over call when the competition was launched and I asked him if he wants to participate together. He agreed and brought Jeffrey on board and we three became a team. Though I did work with Vivek in past on many things but working with Jeffrey was a new experience. As soon as we started working for the first round made me realise that we three come together with very different skill sets which makes us a very strong team. And the journey started with our team name. We named our team ‘Corona Pyar Hai’ for our mutual love for Corona- a very popular brand by AB InBev. During the 1st week of July, cases were launched and we had three options. We chose the one which we found most challenging given our location i.e. coming up with a craft beer portfolio for Ab Inbev India. We met up multiple times just to understand the case and make the structure of our research. Since, this was the 1st time, this competition was launched, and we had no reference for how to go about this. We started with research. We went through some industry reports to understand the macro picture. But in order to bring consumer insights, we conducted personal interviews of consumers. This helped us in developing the emotional value chain and to add more credibility to our research, we also talked to cicerone certified bartenders. This gave us a deep understanding of the industry, recent trends as well as needs of the consumers. We were clear with what we want to present but executing it was a challenge. The first round required a video submission which is fun but needs much higher time commitment, planning and skill. I remember waking up early morning to utilise the golden hours of light and us shooting videos together. I think the most thrilling part was submitting it just 5 minutes before the deadline. When the results of the 1st round came and we moved to top 20 teams across India, I think the level of seriousness and commitment for the competition increased. We wanted to make everything perfect, so we took the advice of our professors on our submission, improved in the areas where they suggested and researched more to back each and every word that was on our slides (submission for 2nd round). Two weeks later, we get to know that we reached the finale. It was on 23rd August in Bangalore and on the same day, I had my visa interview in Mumbai because I was going for International Immersion Programme. I did try to postpone or prepone the Visa Interview date but it did not work out. We had a week to prepare for finale and we were working day in and out on our submission. Even on the D-Day, I was continuously on phone with my team members to discuss things. And my team members Vivek and Jeffrey did a brilliant job. We won the finale! I remember, I was in my hotel in Mumbai when this happened and my batch mates came running to me when the news broke. The overall experience has been amazing and I think this is one thing that I will never forget.

Few Things that worked in our favour:
 Team Composition: All 3 of us have different backgrounds and different skill sets so we came together as a whole package.
 Perseverance and Smart Work: This term has been crazy with maximum credits and other non-curricular activities. But managing time daily even only for a few minutes on some days helped us a lot.
 MICAn Edge: The curriculum at MICA is unique and it does bring us closer to the consumer. The combination of craziness and creativity with analytical and business sense is in DNA of MICA and I think that worked a lot in our favour.
Apart from that, I think if you decide that you want to win this competition and work towards that consistently, it does happen. Though I feel, my lucky wind chime also worked :-P