Marico Over The Wall Season 14 · FMCG Business Case · Team of 2 to 3
Six months, a CXO room, and a startup that is actually yours to fix.
Over The Wall is Marico's flagship business competition and one of the longest running FMCG contests in India. Season 14 pulled more than 28,000 registrations, carries prizes and rewards worth over ₹8 lakhs on the official listing, and puts PPI opportunities on the table for campus winners. What sets it apart is the ending. The top three teams do not just present and go home. They spend two months on a live project with the Marico Innovation Foundation, and then pitch to founder and chairman Harsh Mariwala himself.
Where the season stands
Registrations for Season 14 closed on 13 August 2026, and the season now runs deep into the calendar. Mentorship runs through October, the CXO Round is on 13 November 2026, and the live project with Marico Innovation Foundation stretches to January 2027. If you are already in, this is your roadmap. If you missed it, read this as the Season 15 brief, because the structure has been stable for years.
What is on the table
Cash across five categories, and PPIs for campus winners
The prize pool for Over The Wall Season 14 is unusually wide. Most competitions concentrate everything at the podium. Marico spreads rewards across the Grand Finale winners, both runners-up, a People's Choice Award, campus ambassadors and the quiz round. Grand Finale winners take ₹4,00,000 with PPIs for every team member, first runners-up take ₹2,00,000 with PPIs, and second runners-up take ₹1,00,000.
Beyond the podium, the People's Choice Award carries ₹1,00,000, campus ambassador winners share ₹20,000, and the top three finishers in the Marico Quiz get prizes from the company. Campus winners also stand to receive PPI opportunities and gifts, which means the recruitment upside starts well before the national stage. The campus with the highest registrations as a percentage of eligible students gets special recognition.
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Grand Finale winners
₹4,00,000 cash plus PPIs for all team members.
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Runners-up
₹2,00,000 with PPIs for the first runners-up and ₹1,00,000 for the second runners-up.
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People's Choice
A separate ₹1,00,000 award decided outside the jury table. A second route to a cash win.
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Campus level
PPI opportunities and gifts for all campus winners, ₹20,000 for campus ambassadors, and prizes for the top 3 quiz scorers.
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Team format
Teams of 2 to 3 members, with the team leader responsible for the quiz round.
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Eligibility
First and second year students in flagship full-time two year MBA programmes from 20 eligible B-Schools, plus 32 wildcard campuses that enter through the quiz.
The wildcard rule most students miss
If your campus is a wildcard, the quiz is the entire gate
Teams from the 20 eligible B-Schools progress on their submissions. Teams from the 32 wildcard campuses only advance if they finish in the top 20 of the Marico Quiz. That is a 15 minute trivia test on Marico, taken by the team leader, deciding whether your idea ever gets read. If you are on a wildcard campus, the quiz deserves more prep than the deck.
The brands you will be working on
Parachute, Saffola, Beardo and a portfolio in transition
Over The Wall asks students to step into the role of a business leader and find fresh avenues of growth for Marico. The brand set spans the old core and the new digital-first portfolio. Parachute and Saffola are mass market anchors with decades of distribution behind them. Livon and Set Wet sit in personal care. Beardo, Just Herbs and True Elements are the digital-first acquisitions that Marico has been scaling through ecommerce and quick commerce.
That split is the strategic tension worth building your idea around. Marico is a legacy FMCG company trying to grow a digital-first portfolio at pace, without diluting the brands that pay the bills. Any idea that speaks to that tension credibly, whether it is a category entry, a channel play, a sustainability angle or a consumer segment nobody is serving, lands better than a generic growth deck.
What past seasons tell us
First, the competition genuinely hires. Season 9 was won by a team from SCMHRD Pune that took ₹5 lakh and a direct placement interview. Over the years Over The Wall has become one of the more reliable routes into Marico's early careers pipeline, which is exactly why registrations crossed 28,000 this season.
Second, the ending is the differentiator. Very few corporate competitions hand you a two month live project with a real startup. The Marico Innovation Foundation phase puts the top 3 teams inside an operating business, and the Grand Finale is judged on what you did there, not just on what you proposed in August.
How the season runs
Seven stages that stretch from July to January
These are the actual Season 14 stages from the official listing. Read them as the template for Season 15.
1
Stage One
Begin Your Journey
Registered teams complete a short form covering their aspirations, interests and expectations from an organisation. It is not scored like a case round, but it is the first thing Marico reads about you.
Tip: answer this as a candidate, not as a form filler. Recruiters do read these responses, and a thoughtful answer about why FMCG and why Marico is cheap to write and useful later in a PPI conversation.
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Stage Two
Marico Quiz, 15 minutes of trivia
Mandatory for every registered team. The team leader takes a 15 minute quiz on Marico trivia. Top 3 scorers win prizes, and the top 20 teams from wildcard institutes qualify for the Business Idea Submission round.
Tip: prepare from the annual report, the brand pages and recent press. Founding year, leadership names, brand acquisitions, revenue split between India and international, and Marico Innovation Foundation initiatives are recurring quiz territory.
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Stage Three
Business Idea Submission
Teams submit one big idea in their chosen category, built around the specified focus areas. The format is a 3 slide PPT plus a 3 to 4 line summary.
Tip: three slides means one idea, not three. Use slide one for the consumer or business gap, slide two for the idea and how it works, slide three for size of prize and why Marico specifically wins here. The 4 line summary is what gets skimmed first, so write it last and write it hard.
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Stage Four
Campus Face-Off
Shortlisted teams build a 5 slide presentation and present to a jury of senior leaders at Marico. From this pool, the top 8 to 10 teams nationally move to the CXO round.
Tip: this is your first live jury. Rehearse to the clock and rehearse the handoffs between speakers. Teams lose here on time management far more often than on idea quality.
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Stage Five
Mentorship phase, late September to late October
Each shortlisted team is assigned a Marico mentor and works with them to sharpen the proposal ahead of the CXO round.
Tip: your mentor is an internal advocate. Bring them decisions to weigh in on, not progress reports. Ask what the CXO panel has historically pushed back on, and fix that before the room does it for you.
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Stage Six
CXO Round, 13 November 2026
The top 8 to 10 teams present to Marico's MD, CEO and CXO leadership team. This is the round that decides who gets the live project.
Tip: CXOs test feasibility, not creativity. Be ready with the cost of the idea, the first market you would pilot in, the metric you would judge it on in 90 days, and what you would kill to fund it.
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Stage Seven
Live project with MIF, then the Grand Finale
The top 3 teams work on two month live projects with the Marico Innovation Foundation, solving real problems for a startup organisation. They then present their solutions to a panel including founder and chairman Harsh Mariwala.
Tip: treat the live project as an extended interview, because it is. Show up on calls, meet deadlines with the startup, and document impact in numbers. The finale rewards teams that changed something, not teams that produced a nice report.
Who this is built for
Both years, and both kinds of campuses
Over The Wall is open to first and second year students in flagship full-time two year MBA programmes. That dual-year eligibility is rare among corporate flagships, and it means second years can chase this alongside placement prep while first years use it as a PPI route into the summer cycle.
The structure also has a genuine wildcard door. If your campus is not among the 20 core institutes, you can still compete through the 32 wildcard campus route by finishing in the top 20 of the quiz. It is a narrow gate, but it is a real one, and it makes Over The Wall one of the more accessible flagship competitions for students outside the usual shortlist.
How to win
Six habits of teams that reach the CXO room
1
Pick the brand before you pick the idea
Anchoring on one brand, say Beardo in quick commerce or Saffola in functional foods, forces specificity. Portfolio-wide growth ideas read as generic and rarely survive the first shortlist.
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Read the annual report before you write anything
Marico publishes its category mix, growth rates, digital-first portfolio ambition and international performance. Numbers pulled from the company's own disclosures make your sizing credible and your quiz prep easier at the same time.
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Do not treat the quiz as a formality
It is mandatory for every team and it is the only gate for wildcard campuses. Fifteen minutes of trivia is the cheapest advantage in the entire competition, and most teams walk into it cold.
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Write the four line summary like a headline
With thousands of submissions, the summary decides whether your three slides get real attention. State the idea, the brand, the consumer gap and the prize size. No throat clearing, no context paragraph.
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Design for the People's Choice Award too
A separate ₹1,00,000 sits outside the jury's decision. Ideas that are easy to explain in one line and easy to visualise travel further in a popular vote than technically elegant ones. Build one memorable visual you can share.
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Plan your calendar for six months, not six days
This season runs from July to January and overlaps with summers, placements and exams. Teams drop out mid-way every year. Agree upfront who carries the load during your campus crunch weeks.
Resources worth an evening of your time
Official links and where to track Season 15
These are the sources worth your time. Click each link to open it in a new tab.
The official listing with the full competition structure, stage timelines, eligible institute list and prize breakdown. Follow the page to catch Season 15 when it opens.
Build an idea that survives six months of scrutiny
AceCase Pro and Super100 train MBA students on idea selection, opportunity sizing and live defence, the skills that decide rounds like the Campus Face-Off and the CXO presentation.
✓ Mentor reviews on your 3 slide and 5 slide submissions
✓ Mock jury drills modelled on senior leadership panels
All details in this article are based on the official Marico Over The Wall Season 14 listing on Unstop and publicly available coverage of past editions as of the publication date. Registrations for Season 14 closed on 13 August 2026. Eligibility, dates, rewards, team size, campus lists and round structures may change at the discretion of Marico Limited or the event organizers. Please verify all information on the official Unstop page before applying to any future edition. AceMBA is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to Marico Limited. This guide is for informational and preparatory purposes only.
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