IIM-C's PGPEX team which had been declared as the first 1st runner up of the National Competition for Management students (NCMS), conducted by AIMA was felicitated with NCMS 2010 award at the 37th National Management Convention in Kolkata.

Sameer Karkhanis and Anand Moroney, the PGPEX students from IIM Calcutta presented their paper on a unique and self developed model called the 3i model at National Competition for Management students. The key wheels of the 3i model were Infrastructure, Innovation and Inclusion. Their contention was that, the majority of the problems facing the industry could be broadly classified into the three mentioned categories. They represented these problems as wheels of opportunity that need to be turned in order for the Indian Industry to propel forward in a sustainable manner.

Infrastructure, they argued was the key driver that would take the industry forward and make it stand against other competing nations like china, Brazil and Russia. India needed to improve its roads, rails, ports, power, and internet infrastructure in order to see a continued growth. This infrastructure driven growth however would not be the end of all problems and the other 2 I's of the model - Innovation and Inclusion would need to be addressed as well if India were to see itself as an economic superpower.

Innovation, as shown by data was not a major focus area for Indian Industry and India lagged behind its rivals in all key criteria including patents filed and in terms of the number of researchers per million people. Indian Industry also spent much lesser in both absolute terms as well as percentage terms as compared to the rest of the world.

Inclusion, meaning the broad based growth of the whole set of stakeholders of a company especially employees and society was critical for the country's overall growth and to address unrest problems in the country.

To this end they proposed a solution in which companies would address the bottom of pyramid in a sustainable and profitable way. They cited examples of Infosys for employee inclusion, Tata Swach as a product for the masses which would provide clean drinking water to masses and that of FabIndia which provides livelihood to thousands of rural artisans in the country.

The judges were impressed by the cogent and coherent thoughts, thorough and relevant quantitative data analysis, and the originality of unique 3-i model proposed by the team IIM Calcutta.

The NCMS is held each year with a number of teams from a number of B-schools across the country participating in it with a different theme each year. The competition this year was the 7th year of the event and saw around 210 B-schools participating. The theme this year was "Managing Organizational and Managerial Challenges in India". The competition was conducted in 3 stages.