The EV Gambit

You are running EVans — a pure-play EV manufacturer with 35% market share — and the industry is shifting around you. In EV Gambit, five events unfold across five rounds, each reshaping the competitive landscape in ways that are not always obvious. Your task is not simply to outmanoeuvre rivals, but to read the structure correctly and respond to the force that matters most in that moment. The decisions you make will either reinforce your position — or expose exactly where your strategic thinking fell short.

Authors:

Dr. Devasheesh Mathur

Academic Partner:

LEVEL

Undergraduate, MBA, Executive Ed, Graduate

TYPE

Single Player

DURATION

60 mins

DISCIPLINE

Strategy & General Management

Introduction

EV Gambit is a single-player strategy simulation that immerses participants in the structural turbulence of India's electric vehicle industry. Participants take control of EVans, a pure-play EV manufacturer commanding 35% of a rapidly growing but volatile market segment. Across five event-driven rounds, they face realistic industry shocks — a government subsidy flood, a geopolitical import ban, buyer consolidation, a competitor emissions scandal, and Tesla's premium market entry — each of which shifts one or more of Porter's Five Forces and demands a precisely calibrated strategic response.

Unlike simulations that reward generic aggressiveness, EV Gambit teaches that superior performance stems from structural diagnosis: identifying which force has shifted most in each round and selecting decisions explicitly aligned to that movement. The simulation's water level visualisation makes this logic visible, transforming abstract theory into intuitive pattern recognition and leaving participants with a fundamentally different way of reading competitive dynamics.

Learning Objectives

Apply Five Forces dynamically
Identify dominant force shifts
Align decisions to structural pressure
Separate strategy from rivalry
Evaluate policy impact on industry economics

Key Features

Five event-driven rounds set in India's EV industry, each introducing a distinct structural shock drawn from real competitive dynamics
Decision options spanning business strategy (capacity, pricing), corporate strategy (partnerships, upstream investments, ESG), and sales and marketing (channels, campaigns, discounts)
Water level visualisation that shows how well each decision addressed the dominant force movement
Performance leaderboard reflecting force-aligned decision effectiveness across all five events, with bands ranging from Excellent (85–100%) to Needs Improvement (<50%)
Separate debrief views for participants and facilitators, with individual decision trails and comprehensive class analytics respectively

Educational Outcomes

Move beyond salary-matching toward strategy-aligned, data-driven compensation decisions
Recognise compensation as a portfolio of levers rather than a single salary number
Understand the real cost of negotiation inefficiency in competitive hiring environments
Develop the ability to evaluate and prioritise candidates based on skills, experience, and strategic fit — not just availability or acceptance
Internalise that effective compensation is not about paying the most — it is about paying the right mix to the right person at the right time

Topics Covered

Apply Five Forces dynamically

Identify dominant force shifts

Align decisions to structural pressure

Separate strategy from rivalry

e policy impact on industry economics