Team Frontiers of PGPEM deemed title winners at XLRI Jamshedpur’s case competition
Rakesh Shanmugam, Kalpana S, and John Sundar from the Year-1 cohort compete against 431 teams
17 February, 2025, Bengaluru: Three students from the Year-1 cohort of the MBA for Working Professionals (PGPEM)— Rakesh Shanmugam, Kalpana S, John Sundar—have emerged as title winners of the XLRI Ensemble-Valhalla 2024 case competition ‘Helios’—an operations efficiency challenge, held in November 2024. Team Frontiers competed against 431 national teams, showing exceptional problem-solving skills in optimizing logistics efficiency.
The case focused on GreenWorks, a mid-size manufacturer of eco-friendly packaging materials. The company faced frequent delivery delays and communication gaps due to reliance on small-scale suppliers and third-party logistics (3PL) fleets lacking sophisticated tracking systems.
Their modeled solution led the team to identify key challenges faced by GreenWorks and possible assumptions to proceed with the case analysis. On understanding the nuances of fleet tracking across geographies, they presented actionable tech-interventions including exploring IoT-based tracking, cellular solutions, and API integrations. More specifically, the toolkit targeted Plug-and-Play, real-time tracking, leveraging the Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP) and government APIs (VAHAN, FASTag, etc.) for cost-effective tracking without additional investments.
Overall, strategic recommendations were also made on local warehouse collaborations, supplier integration portals, multimodal transportation, and tech-enabled decision-making.