Participants from FMS Delhi and IIM Kozhikode were announced as the winner and runners-up at ATOM.

The fourth season of Bajaj Finserv Limited’s prestigious business school campus competition, ATOM, has come to an end. The initiative to nurture and create a pool of future business leaders saw hundreds of participating teams. At the end of the four-level competition teams from the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi and Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Kozhikode were deemed the winner and the runners-up respectively.

The unique competition saw 1,180 teams from 17 B-schools from around India sign up for the competition. ATOM is designed to challenge participants with futuristic financial technology scenarios for which they have to come up with cutting-edge solutions.

The concept behind the fourth season of the competition has been different from that of the past years. This year the theme of the challenge was ‘ATOM CEOs Challenge’. Aimed at challenging the brightest young minds across the nation, the problem statements of the competition were curated by chief financial officers (CEOs). Participants had to come up with ground-breaking solutions to the problems posed.

ATOM CEOs Challenge had the participants compete in four levels. The first round was a seed pitch round with two funding series and a grand finale. After the first round, 44 teams were shortlisted. Subsequent rounds further narrowed the competition down to 13 teams from which the top 5 teams presented their innovative solutions to the jury in the grand finale.

Team ‘Catalyst’ from FMS Delhi pitched their strategy for health insurance sales distribution via digital and on-field channels while minimising the cost of acquisition. This pitch won them the first prize which came with a cash prize of Rs 5,00,000 and a pre-placement offer from Bajaj Finserv.

The jury gave the second prize to Team 'Sodawaterbottleopenerwala’ from IIM Kozhikode. They won Rs 3,00,000 cash prize and a pre-placement interview opportunity with Bajaj Finserv.

Deepak Reddy, group head - human resources, Bajaj Finserv Limited said, "This is a unique, app-based campus competition, which provides an opportunity for students to work on emerging challenges of the BFSI industry. ATOM helps ignite bright young minds from the country’s top business schools to create innovative solutions for existing business challenges and to create disruptive new business strategies for the future. The CEO’s Challenge was a new format of ATOM introduced this year and we witnessed impressive participation and solutions by the students.”