A team from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) comprising Aalap Sharma, Maithreyi J and Paras Singhal won the ITC 'Mera gaon mera desh' business plan contest for students of business schools in India and abroad.

The IIMB team came up with a business plan for rural business process outsourcing (BPO). Launched on September 15, 2004, the theme of the contest was 'Creating value for rural India.' The first runners up were Jhuma Kundu, Amit Singh and Mukesh Kumar from Manage-Hyderabad for their plan on medicinal and aromatic plants.

The second runners up were Amrita Ganguly, Ashwin Raguraman and Dipin Abraham from SIBM-Pune for a rural electrification system using biomass.

The panel of judges comprised Ranjt Pandit, CEO of McKinsey India, economist Isher Ahluwalia, Krishna Palepu of Harvard Business School and T N Ninan, editor and publisher of Business Standard.

ITC chairman Y C Deveshwar praised the high standard of presentations made by the participating teams at the awards ceremony held here on January 15.

The winning team bagged prize money of Rs 6 lakh, while the first runner got Rs 4.5 lakh and the second runner up Rs 3 lakh. Special awards of Rs 75,000 went to XLRI Jamshedpur, IMI Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad, which had also reached the finals.

The contest was organised with the objective of encouraging fresh management schools students to come up with new business ideas and economic solutions that could speed up economic development outside urban centres and create sustainable value for rural India, ITC said in a press release issued here.

The contest evoked overwhelming response and as many as 374 teams had submitted business plans. After preliminary rounds held at the campuses, 27 institutes were short-listed for the pre-final round held in Kolkata on January 14, from which six teams qualified for the finals held at the ITC Sonar Bangla Hotel here.