NEGA Final Report

Name – Ashwin Bansal

PGID – 62210352

The negotiations that I’d like to describe involves those I encountered while carrying out my

responsibilities as Lead Coordinator (LC) for the ISB Super League. During the event, I had

managed to convince 30 students to invest ₹25 lakhs in an intra-college sports franchise.

However, now that people had invested a record-breaking sum into the league, it was upon

me to make this event as engaging and grand as I had promised. To do that, I convinced the

Student Engagement & Applied Learning (SEAL) team at ISB to help with the funding for

this event.

The most important factor behind this negotiation was that SEAL had never funded any event

for ISL, they do not account for this in their annual budget, if they commit any funds towards

the tournament, it’ll act as a shortfall in their annual budget.

Moreover, ISL is not an external facing event, it’s a sports league for the current cohort and

some passionate alums. Other marquee events such as the Finance Conclave or the

Leadership summit usually involves corporate leaders coming from various fields. Hence,

ISL is not a major priority for SEAL relative to other marquee events.

Furthermore, we had 375 players registering for this event, almost 50% more than the last

time. Moreover, the franchisees had already lost a major chunk of their budgeted investment

in buying the franchise. The operating expenses from the prize pool was not going to be

enough to organise the event at this scale. I had about ₹2.5 lakhs I could use to organise the

event, last year’s budget for the same event was about ₹6.5 lakhs. I needed at least ₹5 lakhs to
organize a successful league. The sponsors we were raising were mostly in kind and not cash,

hence we could not incur cash expenses with this amount.

In addition, SEAL wanted to have evidence that we have tried our best from our side to raise

sponsors, we would need someone onboard as anchor so that SEAL can help with the

remaining funds.

However, I was finally able to convince SEAL to fund the equipment and referee costs along

with 50K extra for marketing. These costs comprise almost 60% of my expenditure. The rest

I will be able to fund through the prize pool we raised and in-kind sponsorships.

Previously, I hadn’t been in many negotiation exercises. Also, I would be quite unprepared

for the few negotiations I had made. I was also very predictable to the opposite party from the

outset. I couldn’t drive a hard bargain and would end up compromising more than what I had

planned. The lack of preparedness led to extended time

I have learned that I am good at talking to people and putting my point forward with clarity

and calmness. Moreover, I’m able to build credibility with people regarding my ask and why

it is important. I can empathise with other people’s demands and help understand their

problems when they’re not able to meet my demands. I strive to solve problems at both ends

that are restricting us to arrive at a win-win situation.

After the course, I have a direction in which I need to prepare before heading into a

negotiation, something which was missing before. I also try to understand the information

that negotiation party will want from me and why. This has helped me in becoming more

proactive and gain favourable results. For example, in my negotiation with SEAL, I had a

budget ready with me that was slightly more expensive to anchor them beforehand. This

helped me in extracting some value from them in terms of equipment and referee costs.
Moreover, I was able to benchmark my ask with other events that SEAL funds to help

explain things according to their perspective. I wanted ISL to be one of those events that has

now reached a scale that SEAL cannot ignore. This helped me build credibility for myself

and for my ask.

Previously, I had this belief that in a negotiation, both the parties work equally hard to arrive

at a win-win situation. Through this experience, I have realised something that may be of

importance to one person may not have the same importance for the other person. I, being the

lead coordinator, knew how important this event is for cohort engagement and for cohort –

alum interactions. However, I failed to realize that SEAL organises several such events on a

weekly basis throughout the year. They will not spend so much time in figuring out a solution

for my event specifically or give more priority to it unless I show them its importance.

In addition, I always felt full transparency should be maintained between both parties to

ensure fair dealing. However, after the course, I’ve understood that information asymmetry is

a powerful tool that can be harnessed very efficiently if its working in your favour.

While I was selling franchisees to different people in the cohort, I had to maintain secrecy

regarding the people who were already convinced to buy a team. I had to match people with

higher investment capacity to those with lower capacity to ensure I had well-funded and

sufficient number of teams to sit at the auction table. This also involved breaking a very

strong group of bidders into two good enough groups and connecting them with other

interested people. I also had to undersell the efforts and commitment that the event takes from

its owners showing it more as a strategy exercise than another program which occupies huge

mind space.

When I was convincing potential owners to buy a franchise, I was selling them the ROI that

they can earn on their investment. However, they were far more interested in the strategic and
analytical aspects of this tournament. They were interested in the experience of being a sports

franchise owner. Hence, it wasn’t just the objective things that appealed to people but also the

softer aspects which might be more appealing to everyone.

I was able to garner commitments from SEAL to fund almost 60% of my costs which

included referees, equipment, and other engagement activities. Despite this never happening

in the past, SEAL agreed to take care of equipment and referee costs. However, a huge part of

ISL is networking and interaction parties and get togethers for the cohort and alums who’re

taking part in the event. I still have not been able to gather sufficient funds to organise these

events which make the league a success.

I realized that I must be more concrete in my requests and have some benchmarks for SEAL

to gather more funding from them. I should have created a list of equipment I needed to be

more proactive in my requests. Also, it would have been more convenient if I could ask

smaller things from SEAL first before asking for funds directly. This would have helped

them see the work we’ve been doing, increasing their confidence in us.

In the future, I’d like to be more prepared for the negotiation, it saves time for both the parties

involved. Moreover, I’d like to be more possessive of information, which is in my favour,

instead of opening my cards right away. I’s also like to learn more about things the other

party might need that can help me tilt them towards my side.

Negotiations inside the class were although very close to the real world ones, there were

some critical differences.

We’d have a good idea about the other person’s next best alternative and their reservation

point. Overall, in real world negotiations, the information asymmetry is very high. It is very

difficult to find the other person’s BATNA or reservation point or their strengths and

weaknesses.
Moreover, in-class negotiation exercises had laid out your BATNA and reservation point for

you, but in real life, it is extremely difficult to determine what one’s next best alternative

would be.

Finally, in-class exercises had the universe of solutions already laid out in the case. The same

is not true in real world cases where a solution can be arrived at in multiple ways, it might be

a solution not easily conceivable, or which may require a lot of work from both parties but

still more acceptable than any other solution.

However, the in-class negotiation exercises have provided a foundation on how to think

before sitting at the negotiation table. It has given a framework to help steer negotiation

outcomes towards our favour using multiple examples while dealing with a variety of people

and stakeholders.