Vodafone Excelsior Contest is the casestudy contest, launched by IIM Lucknow in association with Vodafone.

2. • Manfest is IIM Lucknow’ s organized oldest B-school fest in the
country – 27 year old legacy
• It’s the only B-School fest to get an ISO 9001:2007 certification
• And a first B-School fest in Asia to feature in Harvard Business
Review
• Highlights over the year :

3. Vodafone Excelsior – Some are born to Lead
Annual Flagship Business event of IIM Lucknow Manfest-
Varchasva2014
Is a Case study contest where in Students/Participants who
cut across a host of gruelling online rounds and
successfully complete two days of exciting on-campus
tasks shall be declared as the ultimate champions. The true
motto is to not just to bring out talent, but also to bring out
passion among the leaders of tomorrow.
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way“
-John C.
Maxwell

4. What was in for Students!
Winner: ` 75,000 | Runner Up: ` 50,000 | Second Runner Up: ` 25,000
Final Interview Opportunities for Top 3 National Finalist teams
Phase Details No. of Participants
Round I
Online Quiz
Registrations open till: 10:30PM Nov 08,
2014
Quiz Competition: 11:00PM Nov 08, 2014
Post graduate B - School students of all years were eligible for
participation
Participants registered in teams of two at
dare2compete.com/quiz
Quiz questions were domain based and leadership related
1900 Students registered
& participated in the
online Quiz Round
Round II
Online Simulation
Selected teams were then tested on their decision making
skills and business acumen through real world situation
analysis
Top 126 students
qualified from Online
Grand Finale
On Campus
Selected Teams took part in a series of interactive rounds
followed by a final case during grand finale in Manfest-
Varchasva 2014
Teams presented the solution to a case provided after
declaration of round II results to an esteemed judging panel
from Vodafone
8 Teams – 16
Participants qualified for
Finals
Program Details…

5. Participating Teams

6. 6
Sneak Peak at the
Grand Finale of
Vodafone Excelsior Contest
- Some are born to Lead

7. Employer Branding
in Action : Vodafone
Discover
Management
Trainees sharing
their success
stories

8. Branding Across Campus

9. Leaders of Tomorrow

10. The Winning Team

11. Annexure
mPesa Case / Problem Statement

12. Vodafone Excelsior Contest – Problem Statement
Situation: India has a migrant population of close to 300Mn. A large number of them have left their homes in the villages and gone to the cities in search of higher paying
jobs. Most of them have left behind their families. Every month crores of money is sent by these migrants from the cities to the villages.
It is estimated that there are only a little over 100k bank branches in the country. Very little banking has reached the villages. As a result of this close to 75% of the people in
villages do not have access to proper financial services. The nearest bank branch is many times a good 25km away.
As a result of this, a large portion of domestic remittances still happen through informal means - could be somebody within a group actually going back to the village and
physically carrying money from everyone. Close to 70% is estimated to go through this route.
The banking network is estimated to handle close to 20% of the remittances. However for banks this is definitely not their core business and hence tends to push this
business to their customer service points. These services points normally have huge queues especially on Mondays and have fixed working hours. It is actually an ordeal for
the migrants to send money through this route.
The remaining goes through the postal system. However, the charges are exorbitant. In all these cases:
1. The migrant only hands over the cash. All further processing to ensure money reaches the destination is done by the person receiving this money.
2. There is a huge element of trust since the money in question is a significant portion of the sender’s earnings and it is a lso critical that it reaches the village.
Mobile companies are now attempting to get into this domestic remittance business. The pioneer in the field has been the Safaricom service in Kenya called mpesa.
Launched only around 8 years back, it is believed that close to 45% of the country's GDP flows through mpesa.
These companies hope to make use of their:
1. widespread distribution reach which has a significant rural presence
2. Ability to handle complex documentations as required by the banking system
3. Ability to handle large number of small value transactions
They also hope to in the process bring loyalty amongst their customer base by engaging with them beyond their telecom needs.
Problem statement: How do telecom companies in India bring value to these migrants and thereby garner a larger share of what is hitherto an underserved domestic
remittance market. It is estimated that this market is approximately 30% larger than the telecom market in the country.
1. Most of the telecom companies operate with a mobile wallet. The agent is expected to only load the wallet or provide cash out faci lities. The customer needs to self-initiate
any transaction on the money in the wallet.
So how does one move the market from a current agent assisted mode to a self-assisted mode?
2. Trust is a key element in this business. The migrant needs to trust the agent where he hands over the money to be loaded into the wallet. This is a much lesser of a
problem since he is perhaps dealing with this agent for his prepaid recharge. However how does he trust the agent where the receiver is expected to go and cash out -
someone who in all probability he has never seen?
So how does one build trust in the money transfer corridor?
3. Telecom companies also spend significantly in promoting their products. However the traditional promotions do not work in this case since it has to do with hard earned
money which needs to reach the family in the village - all the time without fail.

13. Thank You 