The Founder's Fallout

About the Event

The Founder's Fallout is an immersive business strategy and turnaround challenge where teams step into the shoes of an investment firm tasked with recovering a company destroyed by founder fraud.

The founder is gone, but the damage remains. Investors do not trust the company, customers are leaving, regulators are watching, and cash is limited. Your investment firm has one mission: recover the company, rebuild its value, and reach the target valuation.

But there is a catch. Nobody has the complete story. The information you need is scattered across your competitors. Analyse, negotiate, trade intelligence, and make strategic decisions to build the ultimate turnaround plan. Can you recover what others have written off?

Round 1: Decode the Dossier | Online

Every team receives the same confidential dossier on a distressed company. It contains real data but is deliberately incomplete. Teams must analyse the available information, identify what is missing, and answer objective questions covering financial analysis, data interpretation, business reasoning, and strategic decision-making.

This round tests speed, accuracy, analytical thinking, and the ability to make the right decisions under pressure.

• Format: Objective questions (MCQs, data interpretation, ranking).
• Duration: 30 minutes.
• Platform: Unstop.
• Qualification: Top 12 teams advance to the on-campus rounds.

Round 2: The Intelligence Market | On-Campus

The missing information exists and is distributed across the competing teams in the form of physical Information Cards. Every team holds different pieces of the truth, and the full picture can only be reconstructed by trading with rivals.

Each team begins with a set of Information Cards and a fixed pool of event credits. Teams then enter a live trading floor where they can exchange cards, buy intelligence from competitors, and negotiate to fill gaps in their understanding. Bluffing on price is fair, but lying about what a card contains is not.

• Trading Duration: 60 minutes.
• Starting Credits: ₹500 per team.
• Transactions: Card-for-card exchange or purchase using credits.
• Key Rule: Only cards physically held by the team at the close of trading may be cited as evidence.
• Deliverable: One PowerPoint slide, built during a dedicated 30-minute window after trading closes.

Every trade is a real sacrifice. Sell a card and you lose the ability to use that intelligence when the judges ask you to prove it.

Final Round: The Turnaround | On-Campus

The top 6 teams advance to face the Investment Committee. Teams defend the single slide they built earlier in the day. There is no fresh preparation window and no second deck. The slide is your argument, and the cards you hold are your evidence.

Each team gets an 8–10 minute interaction with the judges, who will challenge assumptions, test financial logic, and ask why certain intelligence was pursued while other intelligence was ignored. Judges will know exactly which cards each team acquired.

A strong submission should address:

• The real situation of the company, as uncovered through trading.
• Immediate recovery actions.
• The turnaround plan and its financial rationale.
• A clear and defensible path to the target valuation.
• Key risks and how the team would mitigate them.

Judging Criteria

• Problem Diagnosis – 15%: Accuracy and depth in identifying the company's core problems and underlying causes.
• Financial Logic and Capital Deployment – 20%: Quality of financial reasoning and effectiveness of resource allocation and investment decisions.
• Strategic Recommendation and Implementation – 25%: Strength, feasibility, and clarity of the proposed turnaround strategy and its execution.
• Intelligence Integration – 20%: Effectiveness in connecting, prioritising, and applying information acquired during the Intelligence Market.
• Risk Identification and Mitigation – 10%: Ability to identify key risks and propose practical mitigation strategies.
• Defence Under Questioning – 10%: Ability to justify decisions, respond to challenges, and demonstrate sound reasoning during the Investment Committee interaction.

Important Notes

• Round 1 will be conducted online via Unstop. All subsequent rounds will be offline at NSUT Main Campus.
• Round 1 is a qualifying round, and its score will not carry forward into the final ranking.
• All 12 shortlisted teams will participate in Round 2, with the top 6 advancing to the Final Round.
• All team members must be present on campus for the on-campus rounds.
• Team composition cannot be changed after registration closes.
• Mobile phones and electronic devices are restricted during the on-campus rounds.
• Organiser decisions during the event are final.