OREANDA-NEWS. July 31, 2012. The Tata group announced the winners of the Tata Business Leadership Awards (TBLA) 2012, at an awards ceremony held in Mumbai last evening. TBLA is an annual Business Case competition conducted across premier business schools (campus-track) and Tata companies (internal-track) to engage with bright young minds and provide them with a platform to showcase their entrepreneurial spirit. Launched in 2002, TBLA is organised by Tata Administrative Services (TAS), the flagship recruitment programme of the Tata group aimed at developing young leaders for the group for the past 60 years.

This year, the theme of the competition was - Paving the path for the next 20 years. Keeping in mind the future imperatives for global growth, the participants were given a challenge to present a business plan for the Tata group in line with the above theme.

In the national final round of the campus-track for B-schools, Team Jishnu from IIM Kozhikode won the coveted TBLA 2012. Close on their heels, were Team Velociraptors from SP Jain Institute of Management, Mumbai, and Team Dark Knights from IIM Kolkata, who were declared as 1st national runners-up and 2nd national runners-up respectively. The three teams emerged victorious after a formidable clash with six other contenders, namely IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Lucknow, FMS Delhi, XLRI Jamshedpur and IIM Indore. These nine teams were shortlisted for the finals from amongst 132 teams who had registered for the contest.

The national final round of the internal-track for Tata companies saw Team Eye 4 Eye from Tata Motors Pantnagar works as the winners for their case study. The team from Tata Motors was followed by Team Gatik from TCS, Chennai as 1st national runners-up and Team Josh from Tata Motors, Pune as the 2nd national runners-up. The seven in-house teams which were shortlisted for the finals from amongst 48 entries, were, TCS, Kolkata; Tata Housing, Mumbai; TCS, Mumbai and TCS, Hyderabad.

In each category, namely the campus-track and the internal-track, the TBLA 2012 national winners walked away with an attractive TBLA rolling trophy plus Rs150,000 cash prize while the 1st national runners-up and 2nd national runners-up received an attractive cash prize of Rs75,000 and Rs50,000 respectively. In addition to these prizes, a number of gifts were given to the winners by Tata group companies such as Indian Hotels, Ginger, Tata Docomo, Trent and Infinity Retail. The awards were given away by Ratan N Tata, Chairman, Tata Sons. Cyrus P Mistry, Deputy Chairman, Tata Sons, and senior directors of the Tata Sons board were also present at the event. Satish Pradhan, chief, group human resources, Tata Sons, said, “TBLA symbolises the efforts of the Tata group in promoting leadership together with developing a better understanding of the group among the students. It is a great platform for the students to engage with real challenges of the business world and an equally great opportunity for us to get young minds to give us ideas about the opportunities and challenges facing the Tata group.

At the same time, the internal-track of TBLA for Tata companies endeavours to unify the talent pool of the Tata group across companies and geographies and focus on innovation, leadership and achieving excellence. It gives the employees of the Tata group an opportunity to sharpen their business acumen and interact face-to-face with the senior management of the group.”

The evaluation of the business cases presented by participants was undertaken on parameters like creativity, clarity, relevance and business value. The case presentations were judged by a renowned jury of experts comprising of senior academicians such as Dr Devi Singh, director, IIM Lucknow; Professor Sesha Iyer, director, SP Jain, Mumbai; Professor Sudhir Bhaskar and Professor Ananthraman from the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning. Senior Tata leaders on the jury panel were R Mukundan, managing director, Tata Chemicals; Koushik Chatterjee, chief financial officer, Tata Steel, and Sumit Guha, deputy managing director, Tata Reality and Infrastructure.