A team of three ISB students - Abhishek Goyal, Deepesh Asnani and Sandeep Reddy emerged runners up at the Family Enterprise Case Competition (FECC) held at the University of Vermont (UVM), USA, beating teams from 12 other countries to reach the position. A total of 24 teams battled it out over four days in the competition for the prestigious UVM Family Enterprise Cup. The ISB team was comprised the next generation scions of Indian Family Business Houses.

This accomplishment puts the spotlight on the success of ISB’s MFAB, which was launched just a couple years back. Through its updated pedagogy every MFAB classroom becomes a crucible for participant-centred learning. The MFAB classroom offers a unique experience to its students. Here the students not only learn on account of strong curriculum but also through peer-to-peer interaction and get the opportunity to continuously exercise the fundamentals of management, which they will practice the rest of their lives.

The teams were tested on a 360 degree approach which among other topics included solutions for transgenerational entrepreneurship problems, succession planning, governance, incorporating non-family members into the top management, handling family crises, next-generation issues, sibling relations, professionalisation of a family enterprise.

A distinguished panel of judges decided on the winners based on which team best understood, analysed and presented their cases.

Sandeep Reddy, one of the team members, said, “The entire experience was really enlightening. We got to interact with different teams from across the world. The teams represented diverse cultures, which was very interesting.”

The team from ISB was mentored by Professor Kavil Ramachandran, Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of Family Business and Wealth Management, at ISB and also by Subramonia Sarma, Senior Director, Student Engagement and Applied Learning. Abhishek Goyal, another team member said, “Kavil's sir mentoring was the reason which got us to the finals. We were coached on presentation aspects, methodology aspects and were given many cases to solve and present.”