Interestingly, case tournaments are now reaching beyond the confines of the institutes. Like many other learning processes, they are turning international. The Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIMC) takes the lead in going global with this form of learning. An IIMC team is participating in an inter-institute case tournament sponsored by Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp (HSBC).

The India finals will be held in Mumbai soon. The winners will be flown to Bangkok for the Asia finals. HongkongBank will finance a week's holiday in Bangkok for the winners of the Asia round.

The participants in the India finals include teams from four IIMs (Ahmedabad,Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow), XLRI (Jamshedpur) and Faculty of Management Studies, New Delhi.

According to Dhruvank Vaidya, a member of the IIMC team which is participating in the India finals in Mumbai, case tournaments help the participants interact with big companies, handle practical business situations and learn about applying theoretical concepts.

"HSBC provided us a live case study for devising an innovative strategy for marketing credit cards. The study included media plan and action points for the suggested strategies in view of the competition from both existing and new Indian and foreign players," said Vaidya.

The team also studied the trends in the credit card industry, focusing on debit cards, cash cards, co-branding, strategic alliance with existing players, add-on services, use of credit cards in ATMs and various modes of expanding the distribution process.

Sameer Sood, another member of the team, said a study was conducted on consumer preferences, their knowledge of the product andhow to make the services consumer-friendly.

The study also included parameters for global benchmarking, market trends in developed and developing countries and new marketing strategy development through secondary sources such as the Internet.

In another case tournament, sponsored by Lehman Brothers, the topic was on global securitisation. Prakash Samal and Prasant Agarwal, both of whom are students of IIMC, participated in it.

They studied the concept of structured finance through collateral loan obligation (CLO) or collateral debt obligation (CDO).

It was a new type of fixed income security, mostly used by banks in the US, they said. This instrument helped the banks increase their returns on investments, they added.

IIMC has also taken part in a paper writing competition, a first-of-its-kind to be held at the institute. It was organised by Mitchell Madison Group, New York, and three topics were given for the competition. The topics were `Entry Strategy of a Management Consultant Firm,' `PlacementSystem at Your Institute' and `If I were the CEO of Citi Group'.

The winners, Abhinav Sinha and Manish Grover, are at present in New York for their presentations on the `Placement System at Your Institute' and `If I were the CEO of Citi Group'. They will make their presentations at Hilton Hotel in New York for the executives of Mitchell Madison Group.

Jimmy Sebastian, another participant, has been awarded a cash prize of Rs 15,000 for his paper on `Entry Strategy of a Management Consultant Firm'.