Fifth edition of Solaris, the annual management fest of IIM Udaipur, was inaugurated on 9 November 2019. The event, like all the events on campus, is organized by the students of IIMU, and the theme for Solaris 2019 is ‘Success Through Synergy.’

On day one the event began with the lighting of the inaugural lamp by the speakers for Leadership Summit (LS)- the flagship event of Solaris and IIMU director Professor Janat Shah. Prof. Shah, Kunal Jeswani - CEO at Ogilvy India, Lt. Gen Satish Dua, PVSM, UYSM, SM, VSM. (Retd.) and Sanjog Gupta - Executive Vice President at Star India, spoke to the community and provided everyone with insights and learnings from their varied experiences as part of the Leadership Summit, the flagship event of IIMU. Manish Godha - CEO and founder of Advaiya and G Ramachandran - Founder, CreaSakti were a part of Samvadya, the Consulting Summit, while Maneesh Dangi - Co-Chief Investment Officer at Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC, P. Rakesh - President, Financial markets, YES Bank, and Sandeep Upadhyay - Managing Director, Centrum Infrastructure Advisory shared their knowledge with students as part of Arth-Samvaad, The Finance Summit.

The second day of Solaris ’19 started with, Unmesh, the Operations Summit, which hosted Ranag Davala, who spoke about the significance of Synergy and the impact it has had in his career. This was followed by Antar-Drishti, the Economics Summit, where Dr. Shubhada Rao - Chief Economist at YES Bank, gave an enriching talk, linking the disruption in supply to the impact of technology on policymaking. The talk was followed by an insightful session on the learnings from the structural economic slowdown and the twin shocks of Demonetisation and GST implementation by Dr. V K Vijaykumar - Chief Economic Strategist at Geojit.

Final speaker of the summit was Akshat Kumar - Director of Investments at Klay Capital.The day ended with Savannah, the Marketing Summit of Solaris ’19.  A.L. Jagannath, Senior Director, DELL-EMC alliance talked about brand building, importance of communication, marketing strategies and user experience, and how the combination of appropriate policies, tactics, and execution methods can help in achieving optimum results.

Vishal Rupani, Co-Founder and CEO, Canvas talked about how the combination of positive synergy and collaboration leads to marketing excellence, also shedding light on augmented reality, creative thinking, and following an experiential and interactive approach for brand creation. The last speaker for the summit, Rupali Chatterjee, VP, Head Brand, Times of India spoke about the various initiatives that TOI has undertaken, such the award-winning, Two Dots campaign, and the Out & Proud campaign, urging for the inclusivity of people from all walks of lives and promoting an environment where nobody feels left out.

The summit ended with a panel discussion with speakers discussing how consumers love content, and the urge to keep it as interesting as possible. They also shared the value of using data, as a means of personalization for the consumers while interacting with the students during the questionnaire.

Sponsored by Secure Meters, Solaris also included events and competitions for the students, namely, Vaad-Vivad, Mind-Wizz, Ops-Samasya, Auctionnaire, Saudagar, Vitt-Sangram, and Arohan. These interactive and highly engaging events helped the students pitch themselves against each other in simulations of real-life situations, making them think on their feet and also out of the box.

Multiple prominent brands including State Bank of India (economics and finance summit partner), Zomato (food partner), TiE Udaipur (networking partner), ExpertHub (innovation partner), Advaiya (consulting summit partner), Union Bank of India (associate partner) and Seasons Park Resort (Hospitality partner) are providing their support to Solaris 2019. Along with these, Samir Construction Co. (associate partner) and Choudhary Offset Pvt Ltd. (printing partner) are also assisting Solaris ’19.

Solaris (https://solarisiimu.com/) was initiated by IIM Udaipur to help the students interact with the industry leaders and gain keen insight from their knowledge and experience. Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur, has always been committed towards the holistic growth of its students, and via Solaris, it aims to groom the students into future leaders. Recently, IIM Udaipur became the youngest school in the world to be on Financial Times Masters in Management Ranking 2019