During the competition, a team of four members were given a real-world scenario or social problem and a set amount of time to come up with the best solution. IOCC intends to provide cases that go beyond traditional business scenarios to push the problem-solving abilities of the participants to new heights. There is also an additional focus towards cases that are relevant to Asian countries.

This year, team Shak Dart from Bangladesh, were declared as the runners-up of the event. The team consisted of Wasif Arefin and Sudeepto Roy from University of Dhaka, and Nafis Kazi and Shafkat Tanjeem Ahmad from Bangladesh University of Professionals. "This has been an incredible experience. This is my first time winning an international competition and I really did not expect to go this far," Sudeepto shared.

IOCC had three rounds. During the first round, the teams were given 48 hours to solve a case from their chosen categories. There were 8 categories in total, and Shak Dart went ahead with two of them, which were 'e-commerce & tourism' and 'sustainable development and the economy'. "This round did not include a presentation so whatever document we submitted was final. Only 16 teams from hundreds of participants moved to the next round and thankfully we made it through," Nafis said.

The second round was more challenging as they only had 24 hours and based on our time zone it was 7 PM – 7 PM. "It was difficult working through the Ramadan weekends, all day, all night, with the case submission deadlines. Moreover, we had to expand our research and knowledge a little beyond our comfort zone to gather all the proper information and data for international cases," explained Wasif.

The final round was the most challenging and the level of difficulty increased exponentially. 4 out of 16 teams moved to the finale and Shak Dart was the only team representing Bangladesh. This time, they were given 12 hours to solve a case that required a 12-page analytical report and a solution that they would be expected to present. The final case was about a company called AlphaSights which is a global leader in the expert network industry. The main obstacle was the fact that they had never worked with such a company before and neither did any of them have prior research regarding this industry.

However, the team is glad with the final results and suggests younger participants to keep trying their luck at various competitions in order to master the art of case-solving. They further regarded experience to be the best mentor in these cases.

The author is a student of IBA, DU and a freelance journalist who likes reading, scribbling, and blogging. Email: mislammonamee@gmail.com.