Rural Marketing Association of India (RMAI) announced the winners of the 9th edition of Flame Awards, which were presented on Sept 12 at New Delhi. Nearly 200 students, corporate and rural marketing agency representatives attended the presentation ceremony.



Kottiana Raja Achutha Naidu bagged the Gold Prize followed by Tarak Nath Das from IRMA bagged the Silver Prize and Goshalram Govindarajan from IIM Kozhikode and Brijesh Arora from XIM, Bhubaneshwar bagged the Bronze Award together.



Among the 200 entrants amongst 50 B Schools, Gayatri Rao from Welingkar Institute, Nikita Singhania, Abhishek Lohiya and Animesh Sahoo from S P Jain Institute, Debashree Debashrita from XIM Bhubaneshwar, Shishir Sachdev from IIT Kharagpur, Nitesh Raj Kumar Sajwani from IRMA, Anand; Sruti Nair from IMT Ghaziabad and Barkha Jain from BULMIM were the top seven winners. Winners presented their summer project case study during the event.



During the welcome address, Sanjay Kaul, President RMAI said " There is already an increased interest of corporate in Rural India. Over past decade,rising incomes, mobile services and media penetration have impacted both consumer and markets alike.”



He urged students to take up Rural Marketing as a career option as corporates would need young new age marketers to address the changing needs of these markets and consumers.



Mr. Mohan Saxena who was the Chief guest of the event shared during his opening remarks that the aspiring managers should see ABC as Attitude, Behaviour and Commitment. He also shared that India actually lives in villages, and in future Marketing is going to be all about Rural.



Mr. Puneet Vidyarthi – General Manager & Head (Rural) – JCB India Ltd; Mr. Rajesh Tara – Vice President (HR) – Usha International Ltd; Mr. Vijay Sharma – General Manager – GSK Consumer Healthcare Ltd; Dr. Anup Kalra – Executive Director – Ayurvet Ltd shared their slice of their professional journey with the would be managers during an interactive session “ Are you future ready manager?”, moderated by Raj kr Jha, VP RMAI.





The event was sponsored by Ayurvet Ltd and powered by Usha International and Crompton Greaves Ltd and associate sponsor was Insight Outreach.



The event concluded with a networking lunch