Battleground: A Case Study Competition By IIM Shillong

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1. About the Case Competition

Battleground 2025 is a prestigious case study competition hosted by IIM Shillong, one of India’s top B-schools, known for attracting sharp analytical talent across healthcare, strategy, and operations domains. Team G secured the winner’s position, competing against teams tasked with solving a real-world digital health scale-up challenge for Medi-Connect, a telemedicine platform targeting underserved Bharat.

2. Problem Statement Overview

Medi-Connect operates a telemedicine service with a universal home RPM (Remote Patient Monitoring) kit model, and it’s bleeding unit economics. At $12 per user in hardware cost, compounded by 8% breakage and 15% RTO rates, the model is unsustainable. The deeper tension: cutting hardware to save costs triggers a 65% churn rate, because in Tier-2 India, trust isn’t built through an app interface, it’s built through physical proximity and continuity of care. The challenge was to fix the cost structure without destroying the trust architecture that makes Medi-Connect defensible against pure-play telemedicine competitors.

3. What This Winning Deck Covers

The deck opens with a sharp strategic pivot, not a cost-cut, but a segmentation insight. Only 20% of users are chronic patients who genuinely need daily home RPM kits; the remaining 80% are general users who need occasional reassurance, not daily measurement. This single observation restructures the entire cost model without sacrificing trust.

From there, the deck builds four distinct business models (A through D) with fully loaded unit economics, ARPU, cost per user, contribution margin, LTV, CAC, and payback period, scored across six criteria, including speed, complexity, retention strength, and narrative strength. Model A (Family Health Plan at $48 ARPU) wins on total score for the 12-month crisis phase.A similarly rigorous unit economics scoring approach is built out in Case Code-X – IIM Calcutta x Indore.

The GTM slide is where the deck truly earns its win. Employing the AIDA model, a Trust Pyramid, and self-reinforcing growth loops, Family, Community, and Pharmacy. The team designs a CAC-minimising acquisition engine anchored in pharmacy and kirana partnerships. A clean 180-day execution roadmap closes the deck with operational credibility.

Key takeaways:

  • Segment users before touching the cost structure
  • Model multiple business scenarios with a consistent scoring rubric
  • Build trust architecture before optimising acquisition
  • Use growth loops to reduce marketing dependence
  • Always close with a phased execution timeline

4. The Numbers

Model A delivers an ARPU of $48 covering approximately four family members, at a cost per user of $21, yielding a contribution of $27 per user. LTV stands at $67.50 against a CAC of $30, with a payback period of 13.3 months. Model D (the long-run end-state) pushes ARPU to $60, contribution to $41, and LTV to $164, but is positioned as a post-crisis play, not a Year 1 lever.

5. Who Should Study This Deck

This deck is essential for students preparing for healthcare strategy, healthtech, or rural market entry cases. It teaches segmentation-led cost restructuring, multi-model financial comparison, and trust-first GTM design in low-digital-literacy markets, skills that transfer directly to consulting and product roles. Students preparing for B-school case competitions will find the scoring matrix and phased roadmap format especially replicable. Explore more winning frameworks and playbooks at CaseBuzz.

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