The 40th edition of Maxi Fair, the most look after annual event of XLRI kicked off this evening with its formal inauguration at the business school campus in Circuit House Area.
A respected brand in itself, the ISO 9001-2000 certified event was inaugurated by the 4XLRI director Fr. E Abraham in presence of dean (Academics) Ashish K Pani and other senior officials of the B-school. Several events will be organised at the business school's playground for two-days from tomorrow.
Senior executive member of MAXI, Anuvab Bandyopadhyay said this year’s fair has five teams conducting research for partners like Havells, Coca Cola, Nestle, ITC and Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL). " Apart from that this year's fair is set to pioneer digital disguised market research with a digital research problem being conducted in partnership with HUL," he said.
Alongside the fair, a marketing conclave- Apogaeum-was organised . The keynote speech was delivered by CVL Srinivas, country manager of WPP (parent company of Ogilvy & Mather and Group M) followed by a panel discussion on “Emerging Trends in Digital Marketing”.
Panelists included Puneet Krishna, writer of acclaimed web-series, Mirzapur, director, Coca-Cola India Ramendra Kumar among others. The conclave will also be attended by the Maxi team of 1978-1980, that organized the first Maxi Fair.
The idea was conceptualised much ahead of its time, by Sharad Sarin, Professor of Marketing at XLRI and a visionary. Year after year since then, major Indian corporate houses bring their market research problems to the students of XLRI, who design elaborate games around them.
These games are hosted in the XLRI grounds, and are open to public who visit the fair and have a good time apart from winning prizes. The students, on the other hand, get useful data about public preferences, which they then analyze to solve the problems faced by the companies. This makes the task of conducting the otherwise boring and mundane research easier and interesting.
“This year we planning to make it more academic oriented than fun and fair. We have made special arrangements for the event this year where the students will carry research work,” said a member of the organising team.
It may be mentioned that Brooke Bond tasted success to the tune of Rs 100 crore with the idea of newly packaged tea. Pepsi in 2006 decided to give a new design to its packaging. ITC decided to venture into the biscuit market. These are some of the few success stories of brands which were once just ideas of XLRI students.
