Redefining Wisdom At IIM Trichy

The Fear of the Unknown:
One of the most dreaded subject for someone from an engineering background is Finance and accounting. Being unknown entities, they created a sense of fear for many and as for me, I had my own apprehensions about it. Balance sheet, cash flow statement and other jargons used in finance were nothing but a conundrum for me.

Debugging the Myth:
“How many of you are from a non-finance background?” asked the professor on the first day of our class, more than ninety percent of the class raised their hand. What was perceived by me as just another class for solving unrealistic accounting problems, turned out to be unconventional and surprisingly offbeat. It started off with a basic introduction to finance and what followed was avant-garde. Since we were a bunch of people from non-finance background, we were encouraged to ask questions that we came across on a daily basis pertaining to finance. Many questions were raised in regard to the stock markets ranging from normal trading to big scams that affected the industry over the years. Starting from “which was safest medium to invest money?” to the difference in stocks and bonds, every little question was addressed with an example from a real-world scenario. The NFBS sector boom in the 90’s to the CRB financial services scam were dealt in detail to make us understand that accounting was not only a science but also an art “the art of manipulating the books”. We were then asked to find out the top 10 companies share price immediately and the dividend that they payed the shareholders. To our surprise, most of these companies had not paid dividends for years or just paid a meagre amount of their stock price (percentage of the stock’s face value). This was done to make us understand that dividends were only a small part and the actual value was in the stock market price of the share.

In the end, we left our classrooms with a new-found interest in finance and more importantly our fears had completely eroded.

Which ABG company would you want to work for and why?
I would like to work for Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited. In this fast-paced world, the Fashion industry moves at an even faster pace. With more and more people becoming socially conscious and environment friendly, the fashion industry is not far behind. Sustainable clothing is a cause close to my heart and the fashion industry which is moving towards it provides a lot of scope for research.