The Consult Club of IIMA organised Peloton, an online business simulation game, on the Independence Day weekend. Held as an intra-mural activity for the first time, it was a runaway success. Both the PGP2s and PGP1s displayed great enthusiasm which was evident from the 58 teams (with 4-5 participants each) comprising of over 300 people that competed for the honour of being titled the “wizards of business”.
Peloton’s technology partner was SmartSims, a simulation game software provider. The game tested the participants’ understanding of the concepts of finance, marketing, operations and research and development and an amalgamation of these principles to take various business decisions. ‘Peloton’ is defined as a bunch of bikers in a road bicycle race. The game consisted of a simulated world wherein each team was an adventure bike company. Due to registration in large numbers, a preliminary round consisting of a 30 minute long analytical test was held the day before, after which 16 teams were shortlisted for the finals. The simulation game was played in two identical worlds with 8 teams each. They fought each other in a gruelling 4 hour battle which translated to 4 years in the game. Teams started off on an equal footing, that is, in the same scenario with the same resources. However, new challenges presented themselves throughout the contest, forcing participants to make on-the-spot real-world decisions. A company’s value measured in terms of its share price was the basis for final judgement.
The over-all winners were ‘Zombies’ and ‘Andromeda’, both PGP1 teams. The winning strategy for Zombies was focus on continuous quality improvement and Research & Development. They paced their marketing and advertising programs well through the 4 years, gave attention to production capacity and tapped new markets too. Members of Zombies remarked that the simulation module was very good, reflective of a real business and covered all the important aspects of decision-making without going into unnecessary details. They liked everything from the live multi-player aspect to the rollovers at the end of every year (round). The competition was intense and the limited time between the roll-overs along with the sense of competing with the best of IIM-A brought out the best in them. They did not complicate matters by going into detailed mathematical analysis but took simple sensible decisions based on the market projection and other relevant reports given.
Post By: Richa Gupta
Inside IIMA 