Meeting of Minds

Updated on: Friday, November 11, 2011

The east India zone final of CFA Institute Research Challenge was recently held at Hyatt Regency, Kolkata. The Indian Association of Investment Professionals (IAIP) invited 32 leading business schools to participate in the India rounds of the challenge, out of which six schools reached the finale.

The institutes were – Indian Institute of Management Kolkata, Indian Institute of Management Shillong, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, XLRI School of Business and Human Resources Jamshedpur, Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar and Indian Institute of Foreign Trade Kolkata.

The panelists present to judge the teams were Dr Basudeb Sen, director on the boards of ITC Limited, Gujarat NRE Coke Limited, Sumedha Fiscal Services Limited, SREI Venture Capital Limited, Dhunseri Petrochem & Tea Limited and Himadri Chemicals & Industries Limited, Anirban Dutta, head of research and director at Jet Age Securities (a corporate member of the NSE and BSE), Basant Maheshwari, owner of www.theequitydesk.com and Kaushik Poddar the principal officer of Portfolio Management Service of KB Capital Markets Pvt Ltd.

Every team comprised of three to five students. They had to produce original work and no outside information or company reports were provided to the students; for report and presentation scoring was out of 100 each.

On the day of the finale, the individual school presentations were held where each school had ten minutes to themselves, followed by ten minutes of questionnaire with the judges. Their subject company was Emami Limited.

This challenge had started few years ago. Its hosts are the Indian Association of Investment Professionals; the students presented a sell-side research report. There are 79 local level challenges – India included.

The benefits of these challenges are primarily for students to gain learning experience, access and exposure to leading industry professionals, individuals and team prizes.

Students also benefit from media exposure, be it local, national or global, increasing their networking opportunity and there is also a lot of travelling opportunity included.

The school which won the challenge from the eastern zone was the team of Indian Institute of Management, Shillong.

Meeting of Minds

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