IIM Shillong, XIM Bhubaneswar Shine at Tata Steel Steel-a-thon

Tata Steel announced the winners of the 11th edition of its flagship annual business challenge, Steel-a-thon, in a thrilling grand finale held in Kolkata on September 27, 2024. This competition, designed for India’s premier B-Schools, offers students a unique opportunity to work on real-life business challenges and receive mentorship from Tata Steel's leadership.

Team ‘The Mettle Kids’ from IIM Shillong emerged as the winner and Team ‘Legacy’ from XIM Bhubaneswar secured the Runner-up position in the Business Track, while Team ‘The Alloy Analyts’ from IIM Shillong emerged as the winner and Team ‘Metallix’ from IIFT Kolkata secured the Runner-up position in the Value Chain Track.  Team ‘High Flyers’ from MDI Gurgaon emerged as the winner and Team ‘The Iron Fisters’ from XIM Bhubaneswar secured the Runner-up position in the People Track.

Peeyush Gupta, Vice President, TQM, Group Strategic Procurement & Supply Chain, Tata Steel, said: “For more than a decade now, Steel-a-thon has emerged as one of Tata Steel’s most effective platforms to scout for talent from some of India’s best B-Schools. The consistent increase in the number of participants and their enthusiasm stands testimony to the growing popularity of this platform. On behalf of Tata Steel, I would like to congratulate the winners and thank all participants, my fellow jury members, and the organising team for making this edition of Steel-a-thon a big success.”

The Steel-a-thon competition, now in its 11th year, witnessed an overwhelming response with participation from 12,000+ students from 28 renowned B-Schools across India. This year, the participating teams were presented with three distinct tracks, each centered around crucial business themes: "Vision to reshape Business" for Growth Aspirations in the Business track, "Vision to Reimagine Supply Chain" for Sustainable Value Chain in Value Chain track, and "A vision to change tomorrow" for Employee Well-Being in People track. A total of 17 case studies were floated across the three tracks. This season also featured case studies from Tata Steel Europe, offering participants the opportunity to engage with the Company’s Europe team.

The competition commenced with 1648 teams submitting their executive summaries for the pre-finale. After rigorous evaluation, 200 teams progressed to the pre-finale round, and ultimately, 16 teams secured their spot in the highly anticipated finale.

The finalists presented their innovative business case solutions to a distinguished jury comprising leadership members from Tata Steel - Peeyush Gupta, Vice President, TQM, Group Strategic Procurement & Supply Chain, Prabhat Kumar, Vice President, Marketing and Sales (Flat Products), Ashish Anupam, Vice President, Long Products, and Zubin Palia, Chief Group HR & IR.

 The winning teams from each track received cash prizes of INR 250,000, while the first runners-up were presented with cash prizes of INR 150,000. Both the winning teams and runners-up were also awarded Pre-Placement Offers and Pre-Placement Interview opportunities, opening doors to potential career opportunities with Tata Steel.