Nissan India Picks 19 Emerging Professionals as Student Brand Managers 2012

Nissan Motor India Pvt. Ltd. (NMIPL) yesterday announced the selection of 19 young management students from across India as Nissan Student Brand Managers (NSBM) 2012. The third season of the NSBM program garnered a total of 2,467registrations from 590 colleges across 25 Indian cities, showcasing the growing popularity of this initiative to promote the Nissan’s brand identity in India. This year, the program received a pretty good response from all centres – Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru and Kolkata. Mumbai had the maximum number of registrations with 880 students, followed by New Delhi with 618 student applications. Chennai with 445 and Bengaluru with 362 applications were the other two centres with a large number of applicants for the NSBM 2012 program.

The panelists this year include Dr. Nirmalya Kumar – Marketing Guru & Faculty - London Business School, Mr. Prahlad Kakkar - Ad Film Director - Genesis Films, Mr. Harish Bijoor - CEO - Harish Bijoor Consults Inc, Mr. Josy Paul - National Creative Director - BBDO India and Mr. Nitish Tipnis - Director – Sales & Marketing - Hover Automotive India played an important role in short listing the final entries from every region, with the final round  held in Mumbai comprising of 41 students. The entries were judged on several aspects including Uniqueness of the Idea, Relevance to the Automobile Industry, Clarity or Communication of Ideas, Innovative Thinking and Feasibility, while executing the Ideas.

Addressing the final shortlisted students, Mr. Nitish Tipnis said, “The third season of NSBM has brought more innovation and creativity to the fore. The overwhelming response that we have received this year justifies the fact that India has a large pool of entrepreneurial talent which thrives on creative excellence. Through this initiative, we will tap this potential and propel it further to achieve meaningful results.” Ecstatic at the response to the program, Dr. Nirmalya Kumar said, “It is very gratifying to see the talent that India has and it is encouraging to see a brand like Nissan taking them to the next level with a program such as NSBM. The program reflects the serious intent of Nissan to identify and nurture future talent and there is no doubt about the fact that it has created a benchmark for companies to follow.” To add to the overall experience of the program, Dr. Nirmalya Kumar will be presenting a book titled ‘Marketing as strategy’ to all the finalists competing in the Grand Finale.

The range of activities for the NSBM’s this year will vary from creating unique events of their own from setting up test-drive days at their respective colleges to creating buzz about brand Nissan among student community. This year, the campaign was open to second year management students across the country, including the Eastern part of the country, where it was not thrown open last year. Some of the short-listed Brand Managers are from reputed B-School institutes such as IIM Bengaluru, IIM Kolkata, IIM Chennai, FMS, MDI, IIT Bengaluru and IIT Chennai. Nissan Student Brand Manager is currently active on social networking website Facebook, and has grabbed the interest of numerous individuals. Since fan base is an integral part of any event, the third edition of Nissan’s program has received more than 37,000 hits. Apart from that, the program will also be telecast in a 30 minutes format on Bloomberg UTVin 6 episodes, which includes five regional rounds and one grand finale. The details of the telecast are as follows:

The Nissan Student Brand Managers for 2012 are as follows:

Sr.No.	Name of the Nissan Student Brand Manager	City	Institute
1	Siva Sankar (National Winner )	Calicut	Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode
2	Tushar Sehgal (First Runner-up )	Ahemdabad	Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad
3	Neha Damle (First Runner-up )	Ahmedabad	Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad
4	Garvita Kumar	Lucknow	Indian Institute of Management
5	Gopinath Ganesan	Tiruchirappalli	Bharathidasan Institute of Management
6	Ishan Singh	Mumbai	K.J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research
7	Krishan Kant Issar	Delhi	MIB - Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi
8	Chirag Jain	Chennai	IIT Madras -DoMS
9	Nikhil Malhotra	Bengaluru	Symbiosis Institute of Business Management
10	Piyush Gupta	Kolkata	Eastern Institute For Integrated Learning In Management
11	Raman Gupta	Manipal	TA Pai Management Institute, Manipal
12	Rashmi R	Bhubaneswar	Xavier's Institute of Management Bhubhaneswar
13	Sachidhanandham Lokanathan	Coimbatore	Amrita Business School
14	Amit Garg	Gurgaon	Management Development Institute
15	Sourabh Kothari	Delhi	Faculty of Management Studies
16	Sudeep Singh	Mumbai	NMIMS University
17	Anuj Nagpal	Pune	The Department of Management Sciences (PUMBA)
18	Veena Wadhwa	Bengaluru	TA Pai Management Institute, Manipal
19	Vivek Bhaskaran	Cochin	Rajagiri Centre for Business Studies