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Lakhs of money on the table, over 1,000 employees, six services up for grabs, a DJ to pump up adrenaline and, of course, loads of food and drinks... it was ‘auctioning' in a whole new avatar at software company Sapient's ‘Silent Auction'.
Strong bidding
“The service on offer… a DJ party for the team, with snacks and cold drinks at Rs 5,000,” boomed the Master of Ceremonies' (MC) voice, as the offer opened for bidding. “Rs 12,000,” yelled a team, followed by “Rs 15,000” by another.. and the first team immediately increased their bid to Rs 23,000, in what seemed more like a matter of ego between the two teams.
Even as the others huddled together to give out their bid, “we will top it up with two crates of beer” crooned a voice, driving the stakes up from Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000 in a matter of minutes. A service on offer that started off at a measly Rs 5,000 was sold, 40 minutes later, at a whopping Rs 1.65 lakh. It is not too often that such a package would fetch the seller such a large amount, but at Sapient's corporate auction it is a mere ritual done for charity.
This is how the corporate auction at the US-based business and technology consultancy company works: once the auction is open online on the company's portal, employees put up services on offer for other employees to bid for.
Varied services on offer
The services can be anything as weird as an employee offering to chauffer his team members to work everyday to offering to bring home-cooked food for the team for a week. And this process is completely silent and anonymous, hence the name ‘Silent Auction'. Three weeks later, the top services would be selected for a ‘loud auction', at the end of which the entire amount would be given away for charity.
“This year we got about 300 services on offer and the six most popular bids were selected for the loud auction that will happen today,” Mr Munish Mishra, who heads Sapient at Bangalore, told Business Line at the event.
The auction that made Rs 28 lakh this year will be given away to six NGOs, including Janagraha, Spastics Society of India and Dream A Dream. The highest bid that evening was over Rs 3 lakh for bar tending facilities by the Bangalore leadership team for a team of 200 people.
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