Team Pulsars from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad has won the Amazon Customer Excellence Challenge (ACE) 2022, an annual competition that encourages management students to present solutions for solving real business challenges. The challenge this year was to innovate, simplify and build solutions for enhancing India’s digital payments ecosystem. Team Waybill from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore was the first runner up and Team Minimalists from the Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi, came in as the second runner up.
ACE provides MBA students with an opportunity to not only take part in a business case study competition but also provides a valuable learning experience by solving real-life problems, the Amazon way.
The winners and runner ups won cash prizes between Rs 50,000 and Rs 200,000. Also, they secured pre-placement job interviews at Amazon, besides Alexa products and devices.
180 teams shortlisted
ACE was ranked number 1 in UnStop’s (formerly Dare2Compete) most prestigious B-School competitions for 2021 and 2022 among India’s top 10 premier B-schools. Over 22,000 MBA students formed teams to take part in ACE 2022—held between July and September 2022—and gained a first-hand experience of Amazon’s peculiar culture.
During the preliminary round, individuals were given a quiz, and the scores were averaged to determine the final team score. The top 180 teams were shortlisted to progress to the campus rounds. Teams submitted and presented their solution document to a judging panel, comprising of senior Amazon leaders and alumni.
Grand Finale
In the grand finale, 16 national finalists presented their solutions in front of senior Amazon leaders. It was an exceptional learning experience throughout, said Abhineet Pratyush, Shreya Vishwanath, Tushar Sanap and Mayank from Team Waybill of IIM Bangalore. “The ACE stands out amongst the crowd of B-school competitions because of its unique format. We personally enjoyed the document writing style of submissions as it allowed us to focus on ideas over form,” they said. ACE also empowers B-school students with a fresh perspective on skills required to deliver the best outcomes for customers.
“We learnt a lot from discussions with senior Amazon leaders, mentors, buddies and from fellow participants. These lessons will help us in our future corporate career,” said Abhilash, Ekansh, Pratham and Vaibhav from The Dark Horse, a participating team from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.