A competition aimed at tapping the potential of management students held in India drew 1,188 students from across the country.

The event, called Annual Biz Challenge, was launched by Topline Consulting, a China-based communications firm, in association with MICA's annual marketing festival MICANVAS. MICA is a management school for marketing, communication and creativity.

Michael Song, chairman and founder of Topline Consulting Group, said: "Topline is a young company which is for the youth, by the youth, of the youth. It believes that the youth have immense untapped potential, which needs to be channeled in the right direction."

Song added that it was for strategic reasons that they selected a global brand for their first case study competition as the brand had recently entered India in a major way. The jury in the competition specifically looked for the nuances attached to the brand as perceived by young people in India.

The Annual Biz Challenge 2018 went live on the Dare2Compete platform, which hosts competitions for management schools across India. The case study competition was a chance for management students to tackle a live case of a global smart device brand in India.

Shailendra Raj Mehta, president and director of MICA, said: "MICA places a great deal of emphasis on learning beyond the classroom and the flagship MICANVAS festival is the perfect opportunity for our students to put their learning into practice. MICA is also internationalizing rapidly and is building partnerships throughout the world. We are especially pleased to be partnering with Topline as a way of engaging with the rapidly developing and modernizing economy of China."

The Annual Biz Challenge saw a record participation of 1,188 students for the first round. The teams that cleared the first two rounds were invited to the campus for subsequent elimination rounds that was followed by the grand finale. The team from Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, IIT Mumbai, won the first place and were declared the winners. They were awarded a cash prize along with a trip to Beijing, to visit and interact with the management at Topline headquarters.

TopView – a knowledge-sharing platform by the Topline Group – aims at empowering the youth of today with information they need, was also unveiled on this occasion. The first set of courses on the platform is being created in association with MICA. No course is longer than 30 minutes, which gives the reader ample time to process and absorb the information.

Topline opened its first international operation in Gurgaon and four months later opened offices in Mumbai and Bangalore.