IIT Madras and XLRI Jamshedpur emerge victorious at Hero Campus Challenge - Season 5

The fifth season of Hero Campus Challenge (HCC), an initiative by Hero MotoCorp, the world's largest two-wheeler manufacturer, concluded with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras and Xavier School of Management (XLRI), Jamshedpur emerging victorious in the Engineering and B-school categories respectively.

Both the winning teams received a prize of Rs 2 lakhs while the two runners-up teams received a prize of Rs 1 lakh each. All 30 individual finalists of HCC - Season 5 were offered pre-placement interviews at Hero MotoCorp.

Season 5 of the Hero Campus Challenge received record-breaking registrations from 32,152 students (10,717 teams) from both, B-Schools and Engineering colleges, when it was launched in October 2019. All the teams went through multiple assessment rounds over the course of the past four months.

The competition started with the first round of online assessment, to check the basic domain knowledge of the teams, followed by an idea elevator pitch round where the selected 1,092 teams had to present the details of their solutions.

The students then proceeded to the virtual presentation round where 80 shortlisted teams presented their detailed idea to the Jury. In the end, only ten teams qualified for the grand finale.

All the finalists went through an extensive mentorship period with the senior leadership team of Hero MotoCorp, to prepare them for the finale. All ideas focused on bringing sustainability in the shared mobility space and the optimum use of artificial intelligence in current operations.

"Hero Campus Challenge provides an engaging platform to youngsters for bringing creativity and fresh perspective to the table. Over the years, the HCC has evolved into a prestigious platform that nurtures India's future business leaders. Building on the previous years, Season 5 received an overwhelming response from the student fraternity from across the country's top institutes of higher education. Participation in HCC has increased every season and, on our part, we have ensured that we raise the bar in terms of complexity, competitiveness, and challenge. I am sure that the next season will be even bigger. In my view, all the selected teams are winners, for the simple fact that from almost 11,000 teams, only ten made it to the finale. Being a youth-centric organisation, we will continue to bring innovative platforms to promote young talent in our country", said Vijay Sethi, Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) and Head - Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Hero MotoCorp Ltd.

The jury consisted of the senior leadership team members of Hero MotoCorp, along with external academic experts: Professor Harsh V Verma from the Faculty of Management Studies; Professor Anil Parihar from the Delhi Technological University; Professor Jaskiran Arora and Professor Soharab Hossain from the BML Munjal University and Professor Rohit Mehtani from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

Launched in 2015, the Hero Campus Challenge is a campus-centric, business-solutions oriented competition, which is conducted across the premier management and engineering schools of the country.

It is open to students pursuing graduation and post-graduation from all IITs, NITs and engineering colleges. Students in first and final-year from two-year MBA/PGDM programs can also submit their entries for participation.

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