Rutgers’ graduate students win first place in Texas Christian University case competition

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Four Rutgers Business School graduate students, three of them of Indian origin, won Texas Christian University’s Supply Chain Case Competition. They spent 24 hours developing a strategy for distributing a new Frito-Lay snack during the upcoming 2026 World Cup.

A news report from Rutgers Business School Feb. 28, 2025, said the team was made up of  Full-Time MBAs Badri Venkatanathan, Pilar Grullón, Suman Venkat, and specialty master’s student Mansi Sheth.

The Rutgers team beat out 4 other teams to advance to the final round where they won the $14,000 first prize. Altogether 20 teams participated in the competition at the start.

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“We went through a lot of different emotions, from holding our heads in our hands to extreme joy when we won,” Venkat is quoted saying in the news report.

The TCU competition required teams to forecast demand for a new product and how to procure it in enough quantities to keep vendors supplied.  And the strategy had to be designed within a single day.

The Rutgers team got the problem at 7 am, and delivered the results after some pitfalls, by redesigning their strategy, with Venkatanathan as the team leader. Their drew examples from the Superbowl and Taylor Swift’s   Eras Tour scenarios, the news report said, adding that the team got points for their creativity and the comprehensive analysis, keeping minute details in mind such as shelf space available, and what the snack demand could be for 7 weeks leading up to the World Cup.

By 7 am next day on deadline, they had created a 45-slide deck. After a series of presentations the Rutgers team came out the winners.

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