Flash Mob at Mahamandi
Saturday, 22 August 2015
The 'Mahamndi' Tale
Once upon a
time a student went to an MBA college where he was being induced for MBA life
ahead. He was very confused and was feeling bored then came a day when a an intriguing
entity came for introducing Business communication to him, a short man carrying
innovative products, wearing Gandi Topi and announcing an event called
MAHAMANDI.
That student
was none other than me and that entity was none other than our Business
communication professor Dr. T Prasad. As days went on, I came to know all the natty
gritty of this event. It is a one day socio-marketing celebration in which
students from across the nation make their hands dirty to sell educational toys
on the streets of Mumbai and the profit goes to NGO which work for education of
poor children. I was highly impressed by its overall framework and on the very
first day I decided that I would be also be a part of it.
Then came
the Mahamadi day,8th august 2015. I remember the day was not like
any other day for me, I woke up at 7:00 (too early for MBA’s) out of
excitement, packed my outing kit along with my two other team members. At around 10:00 am the event was flagged off by
a famous Bollywood celebrity and thousands of students thronged into the
streets for selling. To make the challenge more challenging we decided to go to
Juhu Beach, Mumbai were the target customers would be not so educated and selling
would be difficult. Once we reached there we were very disgruntled seeing that
there were already 7 teams present over there and also customers were very few.
We were disheartened and became very apprehensive, whether we would be able to
sell even a single product. And yes, so it happened, not a single product could
be in first three hours. We felt dejected and realised how difficult is the job
of sales person whose entire livelihood depends on selling the product. We did
some soul searching only to become more confused, if it is product that is not
up to the mark or venue is wrong or whether we need to improve our perusing
skills. We changed venues, changed our approach to pitch in to the customers and
tried everything that we could do. Then came our first sale and a stream of
happiness and confidence ran down my spines and I could find a ray of hope. And
then came 2nd, 3rd and it went on counting. I remember how
we were trying to spot out the potential customers by reading their faces, engaging
with them around and changing the USP of our product as per the customer’s need,
I say it was extreme fun. It was around 6:00pm when we thought of experimenting
with our selling style. We spread out newspapers on the beach, put all the
products on display and played some good songs on portable speakers (Thanks to
my JBL Flip). Soon we could find that people we riddled by our so called store
and in a fraction of minutes we could find 100’s of people surrounding us and
we were completely engaged in explaining them our product. It was just like a
flash sale for us, we went out of stock in a fraction of seconds. A sense of victory gushed into us and we were
celebrating.
I
believe that our education system needs a complete overhaul. Instead of mugging
the concepts, we should promote students to do practical, gain hands on
experience. Form my experience of four years working a coal mines I can say
very confidently that there is a major gap between theories and practical and
it is events like MAHAMANDI which can bridge up this gap by teaching the
intricacies and making the learning complete.
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