PRODIGY

IIM Bangalore’s International business summit Vista 2019 presents Prodigy – the case competition for
graduate students aspiring to build a career in management. It is a strategy competition that will
test your ability to generate valuable insights and stick to your guns in the face of an intense business
problem.
Don the hat of a head honcho!

Case:

It was the 3rd Sunday of June 2019 and as usual, Mit Parekh’s mobile alarm rang at sharp 6:00AM. As
he got up and put it off, he scrolled through the messages he had received last night. One of them
read, “Dear Mit, I am really eager to join CycloMeet. I am 27 years old and a working professional at
Big Consulting Group in Cybercity. I suffer from weight issues due to my sedentary lifestyle and have
been advised by my doctor to exercise regularly. My friend Bunty has been training with you and I
have seen his health improve drastically. However, every time I tried joining, I was told that there are
no more seats available. Sir, I request you to please look into this at the earliest.”

Mit had been increasingly receiving such queries for CycloMeet – cycling community founded by him
4 years ago to coach people (especially with day jobs) for long distance/ professional cycling. While
the existing group comprises approximately 150 cyclists, the applications to join have exceeded 1000.
Especially in a metro city like Gurgaon with increasing number of corporates, there was a growing
need for fitness. Additionally, Gurgaon has a lot of young people with significant disposable income,
who often enrol in commercially oriented gyms but often drop out before reaching their end goals.

In order to push people and make their fitness efforts more sustained, Mit decided to organize
“Meets” of cyclists, with the goal of building a community and creating an opportunity for people to
ride together with like- minded people, socialize and offer mutual support. He took extra care to
avoid injuries within the group and provided the members with small wins — participation in
organized competitions, providing medals and commemorative t-shirts — and promoting the same
through CycoloMeet’s Instagram and Facebook handles. This ensured the dropouts were minimal.
Overall, CycloMeet would create an environment cycling that people would make an important part
of lives, and possibly even celebrate it as a means of fitness, discovery, exploration and achievement!

With these ideas, Mit had started by coaching his few close friends who were occasional cyclists for a
challenge organized in Gurgaon. Within a few months of training, Mit’s friends achieved 100%
success rate — all of them completed the race which was double the distance they used to cycle
earlier. All of them decided to enrol him as their coach and pay him monthly fees. They were
delighted with the significant changes they witnessed in their health and the sense of achievement
they felt after completing the race. As they went by their cycling routines and posted photos online
with Mit, other people started taking notice. Meanwhile in the past few years, cycling itself as a
hobby and sport transformed significantly. Soon CycloMeet started attracting more people and grew
to about its current size of 150 today.

Demand to get enrolled with CycloMeet however has not stopped. Finding cycling routes for a group
size of 150 along with traffic congestion in Gurgaon is becoming an increasingly difficult task for Mit.
Hence there has been a demand to split group into geographical zones across Gurgaon and Delhi.
This would also allow cyclists from far off places like Noida to join. The option was to allocate
dedicated coaches to each of these groups. This would enable CycloMeet to scale and professionalize
some of its activities. However, Mit felt that this would sway CycloMeet away from its original
purpose of promoting fitness as a goal. Several other cycling clubs existed in Gurgaon but were not as
successful as they were commercially oriented and did not care as much about its members’ welfare.
They were not a “high touch” model like CycloMeet and hence could offer services at half the prices
that Mit charged his cyclists.

As Mit put his phone aside to get ready for his cycling meet, his mind was consumed with the
decision to scale or not. He decided to reach out to you at the cycling meet today and seek your
advice. Mit knows that you have studied at IIM Bangalore and hopes to utilise your expertise in
answering some of the following questions:

How can Mit scale up CycloMeet without compromising the basic nature of the organization? Can
he meet the growing demand or should he stick to the current size?

Rules:

1) All participants must be registered for the event on IIMB Vista website/ D2C. Any participant
who does not register for the event will be disqualified.
2) A registration fee of INR 100 has to be paid by the participant. The submission will be invalid
if the participant defers payment.
3) The participants must carefully read through and agree to the following Terms & Conditions:
All decisions in matters of eligibility, authenticity and final judgments will be with organizing
committee of Vista, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. The format and structure of
events on campus could be subject to change before the actual beginning of the event.
4) The decisions of the organizers will be final and binding on all participants.
5) Registrations close: 10th July 2019.
6) Submissions close: 15th July 2019

Submission details:

1) Please write your answer in no more than two pages. Font: Times New Roman, Font size: 12,
Margins: 1 inch/2.54 cm
2) Submissions to be made in pdf format on the D2C submissions links shared with registered
participants (to be confirmed by KTK/Deepa)
3) Send your submission named as Prodigy_<<Full Name>> via D2C
4) You will be judged on the following parameters:
 Clarity and structure of thought
 Comprehensiveness
 Feasibility
 Relevance
 Creativity
 Cost-effectiveness (Optional; but may fetch brownie points)

Prizes

1) Certificates to be issued to every participant who submit their solution.

2) Winning certificates to top 10 people.
3) Top 10 to be given free YLS seats from 26-28 July at Vista 2019, IIM Bangalore

Some suggested answers that could be used for evaluation: (ONLY FOR CETKING EVALUATORS)
1) Since Mit only coached recreational cyclists who had day jobs, he could find coaches from
cyclists who have been with him during the past one year
2) Resources/money to scale up could come from organizing challenges/competitions within
the groups
3) Tie-ups with doctors/ physiotherapists
4) Specialization among coaches –nutritionist, strength trainer, cycling mechanist, logistics of
routes and food
5) Use of technology to mark attendance, keep logs, automate group formation
6) Split the group in batches over Saturday and Sunday, in morning/ night
7) Tie ups with local authorities/ local city events such as Raahgiri
8) Collaboration with malls/ sport companies such as Decathlon to organize circuits races
within their spaces