The challenge allowed students in the B2B Marketing unit to pitch innovative ideas for new products and platforms that market research companies should pursue in the future.

Dr Manjunath Padigar, the B2B Marketing unit coordinator and student mentor during the competition, praised the student’s inventive pitches.

“The competition was fierce as students presented high-quality submissions that showcased their creativity and strategic thinking,” he said.

Students were encouraged to think outside the box, developing their problem solving, communication, and presentation skills. It also allowed them to put their market research knowledge to the test and receive mentoring from a prominent professional in the world of marketing, NielsenIQ’s (NIQ) Sales Director Alex Mironov.

“Alex played a pivotal role in the challenge,” said Dr Padigar. “He provided the case brief, which included key industry insights, and the challenges faced by market research companies. Together, we also offered continuous feedback to the teams to help them refine their ideas.”

After a rigorous evaluation process, the team comprising of Alexis Petitcuenot, Amisha Piplani, Ishan Bakshi and Sneha Agarwal emerged as the NIQ Case Challenge Champions. Their innovative pitch impressed the judges, earning them a co-branded certificate of achievement from Macquarie Business School (MQBS) and NIQ, along with a $100 gift card for each team member.

Their winning idea was a multi-sided platform centred on consumer health informatics. This platform creates value for consumers by offering personalised health coaching in exchange for sharing their data. Businesses, in turn, can develop curated product and service innovations based on AI-driven, industry-specific insights derived from this data.

“The success of this case challenge highlights the exceptional talent and dedication of Macquarie Business School students. It also underscores the value of industry collaboration in providing students with real-world experience and insights,” said Dr Padigar and Mr Mironov.

“Congratulations to the champions and all participants for their outstanding efforts.”

Meet the Champions (pictured with their certificates and Alex Mironov above – left to right)

Ishan Bakshi has a background in hospitality, and he has always had a passion for marketing. Ishan said: "Expert guidance from Alex turned our 'What if?' into 'Why not!' We couldn't be more grateful for making B2B Marketing the highlight of our semester." He also noted: "From drowning in sticky notes to wrestling with user personas, we did it – proving that sometimes the best ideas come from slightly sleep-deprived minds."

Sneha Agarwal is pursuing a double Master’s degree in Marketing and Business Analytics at MQBS and currently works as a media strategist at a digital marketing agency in Sydney. She is excited with the win and highlighted the value of collaboration that helped combine creativity with data-driven decision-making. Sneha said: “This challenge sharpened my skills in identifying actionable insights from complex marketing problems and confirmed my enthusiasm for tackling them. I’m excited to bring these insights into my academic journey and future career, where I hope to contribute fresh, impactful solutions to the marketing and analytics fields.”

Amisha Piplani is pursuing a double Master’s degree in Marketing and Media and Communication at MQBS. She has a passion for decoding consumer behaviour and crafting creative marketing strategies. Reflecting on the challenge, Amisha said: "The B2B Marketing unit provided an incredible opportunity to explore the future of market research. Winning the challenge was a testament to our collective hard work and creativity."

Alexis Petitcuenot, originally from France, is transitioning from a project coordinator role at an event agency in Sydney to a marketing coordinator role, thanks to his studies at MQBS. He said: "This class has been one of my favourites in my entire business school journey. Studying directly from Alex, the Sales Director of a major marketing research company like NielsenIQ, has offered us the best of both worlds.

"The competition between groups and classes pushed us to invest even more energy and creativity into our assignment and strengthened our team spirit."

The Challenger Team

The runner-up team, made up of Ami Nguyen, Anh Nguyen, Maycee Sugarol, Mia Luong and Sab Macaraeg, also delivered an impressive pitch. They focused on synthetic data as a game-changing idea for the fashion retail industry, addressing the challenge of creating more purposeful initiatives with limited data. Reflecting on their experience, they said: "The B2B Case Challenge was both a rewarding and challenging experience for our group. It pushed us beyond our usual coursework, offering insights into real-world business scenarios, teamwork, and problem-solving under pressure."

The team also shared their journey, highlighting the challenges and rewards of the competition. "From the outset, many of us found the open-ended nature of the task difficult. It took about a week of research to figure out the trends in market research and narrow down what could truly be 'the future'. With data analytics being the fastest-growing segment, we landed on synthetic data as an idea and chose fashion retail as the lack of data to create more purposeful initiatives is a challenge.

"Working on this challenge gave us insights into both the B2B industry and sales pitch techniques, areas many of us hadn't explored before. The support from Alex and Dr Padigar was crucial; they provided detailed answers to our questions and guided us whenever we felt lost. Although we did not win the case, we really enjoyed the process and the result that we got,” they concluded.