IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants) announced the regional winners of the tenth edition of its challenging and rewarding Student Case Competition held across colleges from India and the Middle East region. Two teams from Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, University of Delhi, won first and second place while the team from the University of Jordan won third place at the regional finals. The finalist teams were shortlisted out of 75+ entries received from 50+ universities from the Middle East and India region.
Congratulating the winners, Hanadi Khalife, senior director of MEA & India operations at IMA, said, “I would like to congratulate the students for their hard work in this year’s competition. We’ve seen the competition getting tougher with each passing year as undergraduate students from across the world apply their technical and theoretical skills in a real-world and practical business setting. This year, the focus was on topical accounting and finance problems and the winning teams all came back with excellent solutions to solve the problem they had been given.”
The winners were selected through a rigorous selection process by a jury that included Khalife, Maan Karadsheh – Associate Director, KPMG, KSA, Hiba Daaboul – Regional Business Controlled, Nestle, Switzerland, and Jay (Jaywardhan) Semwal – Vice President, Finance, Hewlett Packard, India.
The competition, announced last year, gives winning students the opportunity to demonstrate their skills at the Grand Finals with an all-expenses paid trip to Dubai which will see winning teams from around the world go head-to-head to win the global first place title. As part of the competition, university students were challenged to demonstrate their analytical skills, strategic foresight, and creativity in teams of three to five members, formulating their cases and in turn, presenting their work to a panel of management accounting experts.
“During these difficult and unprecedented times, we were truly impressed with the dedication and determination it took for these young students to be able to work under such tremendous pressure. I strongly believe that competitions such as these provide a functional understanding of the necessary skills and perspectives that students need to survive and succeed in a dynamic and changing business environment; them being able to do the work amid a fully blown pandemic is a learning on its own,” added Khalife.
Over the years, IMA has challenged thousands of students from some of the top universities around the world and found a growing appetite amongst students looking to demonstrate their capabilities to take on big business problems. For its 10th year, IMA invited eligible students from the region to solve a business case titled: “Should Star Textiles Cut Out Intermediaries?”
Titled “Ace the Case – Prove Your Business Acumen” – the IMA® student case competition has received major praise by top multinationals in the region such as Hock International, CMA Exam Academy, ISDC, Miles, Jama, IMA’s Riyadh Chapter, Wiley CMA, and Morgan, who have come forward to support students in their journey, as Platinum and Gold sponsors respectively.
Details on the case study and participation criterion can also be accessed here.
