Red Building Of Dreams - Saswat Gupta, FMS Delhi

The size of FMS is small as compared to a typical B school. The infrastructural facilities thus available are not always the best. However, FMS students, especially Student Bodies and Societies have a wonderful track record of utilizing the resources of the college in the best possible manner. A lot of optimization and productivity improvement processes are applied, intentionally or unintentionally, in order to take out maximum benefit from the resources available. Also, since almost everybody from the batch lives in a flat or pg (since hostel seats are limited and given to less than 15 students), students of FMS learn to become managers and micromanagers. These factors is turn allows for FMS students to learn to be frugal and creative and this translates to better outcomes in the corporate world for FMS alumnis.  The campus is a part of a University system, coming under the University of Delhi(DU) which is one of the most prestigious universities of the country.

The placements for the senior batch are managed by the junior batch. This allows again removes the possibility of a conflict of interest. The evaluation system is absolute instead of the relative grading system at many other colleges. The batch size is very small and most of the activities in the first year, except for the regular classroom sessions, happen together for everybody. These set of factors along with various other factors allows students of FMS to have a very strong sense of unity and fraternity, which is not as strong, everywhere.

Finally, the fees of the college is very less compared to the quality of education and graduation outcomes that are provided by the college. Every student who leaves this campus has no or a minimal amount of loan to repay. This again allows students of FMS greater freedom and flexibility to mold their careers and also increases the entrepreneurial spirit on the campus premises.

A memorable classroom experience in my B-school

A memorable B school experience happened during the CFOs of FMS Case study competition during induction. As one can guess from the name, it is one of the reputed competitions that is conducted by the Finance Society of FMS.  The first round of the competition was a marathon event where 3 cases were floated consecutively at the gap of half and hour and the submission of each case was before the next case was floated. Thus, one can imagine that it was a high stakes competition with intense pressure. We were distributed in groups of 7-8 people and there were no people with finance background in my group. We were mostly engineers and some of us had a budding interest in finance. We all sat together for the competition and  as the cases were floated one by one, all of us started researching on the internet and tried to figure out the solution to the case. The first case pertained to a balance sheet, the second one to debt instruments evaluation and the third to equity research. We were able to complete the assignments barely within the time limit.

The results were declared and surprisingly we were one of 5 out of the 20 teams to have been shortlisted for the finals.  We were given the amazing opportunity to present the solution to our batch of 200 students. 10 days back, I could not have imagined solving am intricate finance case, leave alone getting to the finals of the CFOs of FMS competition. The results were declared and we had not won the competition. However, we had earned laurels of our batchmates, and more importantly exceeded our own expectations.

Introducing - some of my crazy batchmates

Some batch mates with crazy profiles in batch of 2017 are-

1. Aditya Bhale- Aditya did his undergrad in Mechanical Engineering, an experience which he is not particularly enthusiastic about. Post that, he went to IIT Kanpur for research projects. He did 2 projects. First was a project called Simran(Satellite Imaging for Rail Navigation) and other was a project for BHEL for train simulation. He is a passionate musician and pursued MA in tabla. After this, he opened up a football school called Swatya School. This school trained children up-till the age of 14 years.  Subsequently, he started teaching at coaching institutes and colleges and self-christened himself as the ‘Quant Baba’, where he also styled long hair. He also has experience with startups in the educations sector such as Edumentor. He has taught a group called SuperFive, which were two batches of 5 students each, one privileged and one unprivileged. The unprivileged were not charged any fees by him.
2. Komal Priya- She is a reading enthusiast, blogger and a quora writer. She has been currently working on her book for over a year. She has won debates at the national level. After an accident, she was told by doctors that she’ll never be able to walk again. However, she overcame all odds, trained herself all the way to becoming a trekking aficionado  She has Bhimasankar, Kumar Parvat and Rajgad Treks to her name.
3. Megha Gupta- A graduate in commerce from SRCC. She is also interested in law and joined the LLB program at Faculty of Law, Delhi University while preparing for CAT exam and attended classes for 6 months before coming to FMS. She also used to be a Food Blogger.
4. Sophia Dhawan- She is an expert caricaturist. She loves drawing cartoons and portraits   She also founded Inkstorms, an art community, in her hometown of Chandigarh.

Which ABG company would you want to work for and why?

I would like to join Aditya Birla Capital because it would give me the chance to be part of the timeless Aditya Birla Group legacy. It holds a prominent position amongst the financial services players of India. Aditya Birla Capital is a holding company with many firms providing services ranging from asset management, private equity, structured finance to project finance. With presence in over 400 cities, it manages assets of over Rs. 3000 billion. It is ranked amongst the top five Non banking financial companies (NBFCs) of the country, is the third largest asset management company of the country and amongst the top five fund managers of the country. Thus, working with Aditya Birla Capital would provide an opportunity to learn from some of the best financial minds of the country.