Vikasana,the social service club of IIM B had organized an event called Sparsh. This event was about challenging participants to come up with feasible solutions to globally expand the operations of Samarthanam,a trust for disabled people in India. In 1997, Mahantesh G.K. and two of his friends envisioned an organisation to provide opportunities for the deserving, young, and talented children with disability of any form, or from marginalized economic backgrounds. Thus, more than a decade ago, Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled came into existence by providing free hostel facilities to the deserving students.
The mission of Samarthanam is to empower the visually impaired, disabled and underprivileged people through creating developmental initiatives, focusing on educational, social, economic, cultural and technological aspects.
In the case our team was given, Samarthanam aims to reach out to more than 100,000 people by 2020.They want to expand themselves in other countries in orderto raise funds to help the operations in India. We pitched the idea of raising funds by
doing service to the disabled people.We picked Canada and Finland as the two target countries because both are developed economies and have very high disability rate.Finland has a disability rate of around 34%,highest in globe and entering into Finland is like a gate-pass to European Union.Canada has one of the highest number of NRI’s and Samarthanam can leverage upon it. Our service approach was like a business case where Samarthanam will train people with disability (PWD) and raise money by charging them marginally higher.Close to 200 teams participated in 1st round out of which the top 5 teams were selected. We passed the first round and as a resultof which, we got a chance to visit IIM B and stay there for three days. It was like a dream come true and we made sure that there would be no stone unturned towards winning the competition.
We reached IIM B on 23
rd September evening and were amazed by the scenic beauty on the campus. There is something different about the IIM B campus and getting a chance to stay in this campus was no less than a blessing for us.As per the competition rules, the top5 teams selected for the final round had to visit Samarthanamthe day before the final event to understand the whole case practically.It was really inspiring to see how the vision of one person could make a change in the lives of so many disabled people. I was just impressed by the statement of director “making liability (disabled person) into taxpayer”. We made some changes in our presentation and finally wewere ready for the D-day. We practised a lot to deliver our presentation efficiently in the given timeline of 10 minutes. We were the first team to present thus relieving us of our fearsto wait for our turn later. We presented the case and answered all the questions put across by the jury. Most of them were convinced by our answers. We had to wait until all the presentations were over and we were told later to wait outside before announcing the result. For me every second was close to an hour because this particular moment was one of the most precious moments of my life. After half an hour the Jury announced the result and mentioned that, it was very difficult to choose between 1
st and 2
nd team. They declared the results and we were elated to have won the 2
nd prize. We were on cloud nine and I was living my dream of getting a certification from IIM B for an international event.
We took the pictures on the IIM B campus and capturedsome precious moments. I immediately thanked GOD for fulfilling my dreams. Staying in IIM B campus for 3 days and winning 2nd prize in one of the flagship events in IIM B Vista 2015 are the moments which I will cherish in my whole life.
Manoranjan Kumar
PGDM2
The MYRA School of Business