UST Global Team Bags Top Prize at KMA Young Managers Contest

TechnoparkToday.com (March, 2014): UST Global’s team comprising Mr. Vinod, Mr. Eldho and Mr. Sunil J have emerged winners of the KMA Young Managers’ Competition organised by the Kerala Management Association at Kochi.

Of the total 31 teams that competed for the top honours, 10 were shortlisted for finals. The UST Global team made it to the top 10 and then went on to walk away with the winner’s trophy.

The Young Managers Contest 2014 comprised an Oral Presentation on the theme “Emphasise on Execution & Remove the Roadblocks to Kerala’s Growth” and the UST Global team raked in top points for their clarity and substance of Presentation; ability to communicate effectively with respect to questions raised by the panel of judges; awesome team work and co-ordination in presentation; and contribution of the matter to effective managerial thinking.

The award was presented to the UST Global young managers at the February 28^th valedictory function of the Kerala Management Association Management Week Celebrations – 2014, which had ‘Responsible Management’ as its theme.

“It’s extremely gratifying to see our young managers compete with and win against strong competition from much larger organizations. It gives us confidence that we are doing something right when it comes to hiring and grooming top minds as well as providing them the right avenues to showcase their capabilities. My hearty congratulations to the team. I am sure that this will motivate and encourage our teams to strive for larger successes within and outside the organization,” Mr. Sunil Balakrishnan, Global Head – Center Operations, said.

Vinod Rajan, Sr. Business Analyst (Healthcare Vertical) who was part of the three member team from UST Global recaps the experience, “We were very excited to get this opportunity and to take part as a team, competing against 31 teams was a great learning opportunity and pushed us to think better, faster and different. Instead of coming up with a list of fragmented solutions, we formulated a comprehensive solution framework which is considers all unique socio-economic characteristics of Kerala from a Strategic Management perspective and hence aptly named as SAMAGRAM v1.0 . The solution framework was made highly actionable in nature by understanding the ground realities Kerala and this was done by conducting a survey of more than 200 individuals from different walks of life and also interviewed many eminent personalities from corporate, political, government sectors (such as V.T. Balram MLA, Ranjith Sankar- Malayalam movie Director, Harikrishnan Nair- COO of Kerala Academy for Skill Excellence among others).

Finally what swung things in our favour, I think, was the fact that we trusted each other as a team, we worked well under pressure, and we were willing to take each other’s best ideas to make a highly effective presentation in the end- which is what matters,  winning as a team matters not individual egos. All in all it was a superb learning experience for all of us and we would like thank our UST Global family and also the eminent leadership team of KMA for the opportunity.”

The trophy was given away at the function, which was addressed by Prof. J. Philip, President, XIME Bangalore & Former Director, IIM Bangalore; Mr. N. Ramachandran IPS (Retd.), Former Chairman, Cochin Port Trust & currently the Vice President (Operations & Finance), Public Health Foundation of India.

Cognizant Technology Solutions bagged the first runner up prize while Popular Vehicles and Services finished third. The 10 finalists who vied with each other for the top honours were UST Global, Cognizant Technology Solutions India, Kancor Ingredient, Hindalco Industries, Popular Vehicles and Services, Binani Zinc,  Geojit Technologies, Wonderla Holidays, Directus Consultants and V-Guard Industries.