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The annual cultural, management and sports fest of IIM Indore, the 2020 edition of IRIS kickstarted on December 04, 2020; being the very first of its kind to be conducted in the new normal- virtual mode. The three days fest saw the best of art, music, dance, business, finance, entrepreneurship, marketing, strategy, comedy, etc. all being conducted online.
The fest, with the theme of Reigniting Exuberance, began with lighting the lamp by Professor Himanshu Rai, Director, IIM Indore; followed by the exuberating Keynote Address by Mr. Roopank Choudhary, Partner & Chief Commercial Officer, AON.
The events that took place on Day 1 included the flagship events namely, Ashwamedha, Drona and Chanakya; along with management events like Kalpavriksha, Advaita and Gordian Knot. The cultural event Lasya’s dance workshop took place with choreographer Mr. Venkatesh Chatuphale, who is the team member of Feel Crew and season 4 Dance Plus finalist. Ranbhoomi, the Sports Fest at IIM Indore as a part of IRIS 2020 hosted famous e-sports and garnered a lot of excitement among players and participants. A donation drive was also organized as a part of National Record attempt which aimed at normalizing talks about periods.
The first day of IRIS 2020 ended with an exhilarating EDM performance by Danny Avila & Bass Hunk who performed live virtually. It was followed by a virtual comedy night by TVF comedy stars, Shivankit Parihar and Badri Chavan. Badri’s famous mimicry of a character from TVF, Inzi, turned out to be audience’s favorite and Shivankit’s hilarious mimicry of Raja Rabish Kumar made everyone laugh out loud.
Carrying forward the energy from the previous day, Day 2 was fully packed with management competitions and Envision Speaker Series which enlightened the participants. Mr. Arunachalam Muruganantham, The Real Padman of India, was the guest speaker for the second day of IRIS who shared his journey of creating sanitary napkins and bringing about a change in the world, by also providing employment for women in the rural areas. Mr. Ashwin Suresh, Co-founder of Pocket Aces – India’s leading digital media entertainment company, shared his insights about how with focusing on mobile video, Pocket Aces has emerged to be the first company to cross the 2 billion views mark among original content creators.
Flagship events like Ashwamedha hosted its coveted spotlight round and many other events like Chain Reaction, Jigyasa, Management Studio, Neetishastra and Mantrana took place which tested the business acumens of participants. Finally, after a very long day of competitions, participants had a good time during the Stand-up comedy act of Jaspreet Singh who left everyone in splits with his hilarious comedy performance.
The Day 3 began with Drona’s final round along with Mr. Neel Ghose’s Envision Speaker Session in which he shared his vision about eradicating global hunger and bringing out the best of humanity using food as a medium. Mr. Neel Ghose is the founder at Robin Hood Army. Laavanya, the fashion show of IRIS, which added glamour to the fest even in virtual mode. Many other events like Bazinga, Zero One Infinity, Gordian Knot and Finance League took place which challenged participants to test themselves in various business domain knowledge.
Carrying forward the National/Guiness Record legacy at IRIS every year, this year IRIS touched upon the most natural yet unspoken issue. Period. IRIS team successfully created the Digital National Record aiming to create “Video Chain of Maximum number of participants passing an object”, choosing the object to be the Sanitary Napkin in order to break the taboo of holding the pads in public and talking about periods, which was further followed by a donation drive of sanitary napkins. The Record is being successfully registered at India Book of Records.
As a post fest event, Jaagriti, the Social Cell at IRIS, conducted “Let’s donate a Smile” campaign through “The Virtual Wish Tree”, to share the happiness with the lesser privileged children by fulfilling their wishes. Jaagriti maintained its legacy by conducting this event through Zoom.
The closing ceremony of IRIS 2020 witnessed an exciting Open Mic event which was hosted by RJ Ishaan from Radio Mirchi. Participants opened their hearts out and many poets, singers, actors gave their best performance of the night.