Manfest - Varchasva is the flagship Business, Sports and Cultural Festival of IIM Lucknow conducted in the month of November annually. The 3-day event is a confluence of Manfest, the Business Conclave, and Varchasva, the Sports and Cultural Festival. Started in 1988, the fest has grown in scale by leaps and bounds and has become one of the biggest B-School festivals in India. This year, it proudly presented over 100 events and saw a footfall of over 10000 across the three days, 15th -17th November 2019.
The sporting events at Manfest - Varchasva have been a major attraction in the fest since the time of its inception. They have been instrumental in bringing out some of the top players from coveted B-schools onto the field and have aided in their development of leadership and strategic skills. However, this development is not restricted to an individual as the players’ sportsmanship and the interaction between teams helps in team building, social cohesion and improves the group dynamics; all of which are very important to budding managers like ourselves.
The Sports Committee was responsible for planning, operationalizing and conducting the event. This year, Varchasva saw tremendous growth in participation with over 1000 distinct participants from various prestigious B-schools across the nation. This has been possible because of the enabling sports infrastructure available in the IIM Lucknow campus. Several contingents of top B-Schools of the nation like IIM C, XLRI, MDI, FMS, IIM Shillong, and IIM Sirmaur flew down to the land of Nawabs, Lucknow. Participants competed in 17 sporting events including both indoor games like Squash, Carrom, Chess, etc and outdoor games like Football, Cricket, Tennis and many more. With the venues for sports spread across campus and different sports being conducted in parallel, the entire campus reverberated with the cheers of people who had come out to support their college teams.
The event started with a Futsal match between IIM Lucknow and IIM Sirmaur and their energizing display of sportsmanship set the tone for the rest of the event. The participants entered into the spirit of the occasion in a grand way by battling it out on the fields to win laurels for their institute. Once the games began, the air was filled with enthusiastic cheers and lots of friendly banter from the SledgeComm’s of various colleges.
We witnessed multiple nail-biting moments, with hundreds of hearts throbbing and hoping for the winning goal or shot. There were moments of witnessing a last-over finish in Cricket finals where the host team IIM Lucknow emerged victorious over their rivals IIM Calcutta and then there were moments of cheers all around in the Volleyball finale which saw the host team compete against their own alums in both men and women categories of the sport.
The associations with the sponsors attributed to the success of the event. This season, Varchasva had Cetking.com as its Co-Sponsor, Real Juice as the Beverage Sponsor and Baatla House as the Hydration Sponsor. The event concluded successfully with IIM Lucknow emerging as the tournament winners with a point tally of 203, followed by IIM Calcutta with135 points.
The winning contingent, IIM Lucknow, bearing the Sangahrsh 2019 title will now eye the coveted Sangharsh trophy in its next edition. Let's wish the team luck, as they prepare to set foot in IIM Ahmedabad for the inter-IIM sports extravaganza 'Sangharsh-2020' this January. Go Hell!
The article has been contributed by the Sports Committee of IIM Lucknow