IIMA’s Annual International Business School Summit “Confluence 2009″ will be held on November 27-29, 2009 at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) campus.

Started in 1998, over a short time span of a decade, Confluence has become one of Asia’s largest business school festival. The event includes several competitions among the B School students, coming from all over the globe. Every year, Confluence focuses on a theme pertinent to the existing business scenarios. This year, in its eleventh edition the theme is Survive, Sustain, and Succeed. Confluence 2009 aims to continue from where it left off last year (the theme of Confluence 2008 was centred around Wealth creation with a special focus on the economic crisis) and discuss strategies for survival, sustenance and success of businesses.

One of the main goals of Confluence is to establish long lasting relationships with the industry and engage the students in discussing, debating on some of the contemporary issues in management and learning from a large number of well known speakers and decision makers from Corporate, Government, Academia and NGOs.

Confluence 2009 participants will have an opportunity to listen to and interact with an impressive list of speakers, who will provide insight and share their perspectives on this year’s event theme – “Survive, Sustain, Succeed.”

The speakers are (the one’s marked ” * ” are yet to confirm)

Day 1: 27th November 2009

1. Mr. Rajat M. Nag, Managing Director, Asian Development Bank, Manila
2. Mr. C.B. Bhave, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)
3. Mr. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Journalist & Educator
4. Mr. Martin Wolf, Chief Economist Commentator and Associate Editor of the Financial Times*
5. Dr.Shyamala Gopinath , Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India
6. Mr Deepak Satwelekar, Former MD, HDFC Standard Life Insurance Ltd.

Day 2: 28th November 2009

1. Mr. Pradip Shah, Founder, IndAsia Fund Advisors Private Limited
2. Mr. Gurcharan Das, Former CEO, Procter and Gamble (India) Ltd
3. Mr. Sridhar Venkat, Executive Director or Mr. Chanchalapathi Dasa, Vice Chairman, The Akshaya Patra Foundation, Bangalore
4. Prof. Anil Gupta , IIM Ahmedbad , and Executive Vice Chairperson of National Innovation Foundation
5. Shri Kartikeya Sarabhai , Director, Centre for Environment Education
6. Prof. Krithi Ramamritham, Vijay and Sita Vashee Chair Professor,

Dept of Computer Sc.and Engg., IIT Bombay

Day 3 : 29th November 2009

1. Dr. Preetha Reddy, Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals, Chennai
2. Ms. Meenu Handa, Director Corporate Communications , Microsoft India
3. Mr. Arvind Mahajan, Executive Director, Advisory Services, KPMG Advisory Services Pvt Ltd
4. Mr. L Ramkumar, MD, Tube Investments Ltd*

We are pleased to inform you that Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Former President, Republic of India, has kindly agreed to deliver the valedictory address on the 29th November evening.

Major Competition events :

Corporate Combat

Spanning all 3 days of Confluence 2009, Corporate Combat brings together the brightest management students from all over the country in a tensely anticipated, fiercely contended (contested) struggle to attain the pinnacle of success in the business world. Members of each team fill in the shoes of the top brass of a company, and each day will throw up an array of complex managerial challenges and breath-taking surprises that will stump the smartest, outwit the shrewdest and squeeze every ounce out of every single participant. Post the most gruelling 72 hours of their lives, only the best of the best will survive to be crowned the ultimate corporate warriors.

Masterplan

Masterplan seeks to develop understanding of the applicability of different management techniques in the modern enterprise. Active involvement of industry professionals at various stages helps channelize the participants’ efforts in the right direction and improve the quality of competition. The competition shall focus at stimulating creativity and entrepreneurial passion and encourage adoption of modern technologies and management tools to build sustainable models.

Globalization Challenge

Globalization Challenge seeks to put the business leaders of tomorrow through these situations and test their mettle as they go about the process of meticulously leading a firm through a cross-border merger or acquisition. An invitation only event open to select B-schools, tests the participating teams by having life like scenarios as they compete in their quest to look beyond the domestic shores as they want to survive, sustain and succeed in these changing times.

A Note on Mousetrap 2009

Confluence 2009, has kicked off with one of its flagship events, Mousetrap. Mousetrap, a global business strategy competition presented by IIMA and Microsoft, is an online business simulation game that locks the brightest B-School students across the globe into a battle of wits to gain supremacy of the business world.

We used the Industry Masters simulation for Mousetrap 2009, which is, apparently, the only real time simulation available at present. This real time aspect is what makes Industry Masters a simulation of choice for use in the fast paced yet acumen based setting of Mousetrap.

In order to align with the Sustainability aspect of Confluence 2009 theme “Survive, Sustain, Succeed.”, IndustryMasters introduced six new sustainability parameters like clean procurement, clean production, and water recycling, among others, in which the competing teams could invest. Each sustainability parameter incurred a recurring cost every quarter and resulted in tax benefits for the companies. However these investments would create maximum benefits for the teams if they were relevant to the industry the team was in. 600 teams participated in the prelims which spanned 4 days, with each team competing over a 5 year horizon per day.

Confluence 2009 is guided by an Advisory Board of eminent personalities, including

Prof. Dipak C. Jain, Former Dean, Kellogg. School of Management, Chicago

Mr. B Muthuraman, MD, Tata Steel Ltd,

Mr. Rajat Nag, Managing Director General, Asian Development bank;

Shrimati Ela R. Bhatt, Chairperson, SEWA, Ahmedabad;

Dr. Kiran M Shaw, Chairperson, Biocon Limited, Bangalore;

Mr. Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India Operations;

Mr. Vindi Banga, President Foods, Home and Personal Care, Unilever Plc, London;

Ms. Preetha Reddy, Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals;

Mr. Deepak M Satwalekar, Former Managing Director,

HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co. Ltd; and

Prof. Atanu Ghosh, Faculty Advisor, Confluence 2009, IIM Ahmedabad