If truth be told, “anyone who decides to make a career in the field of finance or economics needs to devote few hours every day towards augmenting his / her learning in a more detailed manner,” came the advice from Amit Nigam, Head –Equities, Peerless Funds Management Company Limited. Amit was the Chief Guest for Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow’s first National Level Finance and Economics conference. Alongside Amit, were names like with Rahul Mitra, CEO, Margdarshak Financial Services Ltd., Sonjai Kumar, VP-Business Risk, Aviva India, Gurgaon and Ravi Kumar Arora, Director, ASP Management Services Private Limited, Lucknow, Former GM, Bank of Baroda and Anupam Jindal, CFO, Sterlite Technologies Limited.

The stage was set at Jaipuria, Lucknow for its First National Level Finance and Economics Conference that was held on 9th and 10th December. It was a huge occasion as the conference aimed to promote research and development activities in the Economics and Finance domain, brought together noted researchers, practitioners and policy makers working in the area on one platform. Thereby it set up important discussions and knowledge sharing on relevant and timely topics that offered valuable insight to the participants.

With the convener and co-convener, Prof. Sushma Vishnani and Prof. Mahima Sharma at the helm, the conference sought to make a marked contribution to the body of knowledge in the fields of corporate finance, banking & financial services, macro-economics, international economics and labor economics. The two day conference had several crucial discussions in carefully chalked out sessions that dealt with various sub themes. Thus it made the tricky topics of Finance and Economics more relatable to the students in the gathering.

Mr. Amit Nigam, Head –Equities, Peerless Funds Management Company Limited was the Chief Guest of the inaugural session. He made students aware of various aspects of the domains in Indian Economy and urged them to learn from others’ experiences besides course studies. Sharing his own experiences, his engaging talk covered topics like equity investment, compound interest, balance sheet, and offered students useful tips that they benefit from throughout their careers.

The well-received session was followed by a tea break where participants mingled with the guests and shared their thoughts. Then it was time for the first Plenary Session with Rahul Mitra, CEO, Margdarshak Financial Services Ltd. He offered important statistics to drive his points home and said, “Long term policy framework needs to be designed to improve infrastructure facilities so as to boost rural economic growth.” Sonjai Kumar, VP-Business Risk, Aviva India, Gurgaon offered a broader outlook on the factors that impact the economy through various examples. He believes, “In today’s times it is vital for research to identify the key dependencies of economic parameters on financial institutions to help in creating fore-warning systems to take proactive action in managing the emerging risks.”

Ravi Kumar Arora, Director, ASP Management Services Private Limited, Lucknow, Former GM, Bank of Baroda further upped the relevance quotient of the talk by focusing on demonetization. He discussed its pros and cons, the impact on Indian SMEs before concluding, “It is a bold step that will help India become corruption-free but it has come with some advantages and disadvantages.” That brought the session to an end and made way for the Technical sessions where participants presented their papers that offered fascinating perspectives on various topics in these areas.

The enthusiasm of Day 1 was carried forward to Day 2, which began with the second plenary session. It had noted academics, Prof. B. V. Phani, IIT Kanpur and Prof. Sanjay Dhamija, IMI, New Delhi on stage. Prof Phani carried the demonetization discussion forward and enlightened the audience by stating that the next big step would be online registration of assets. Prof Dhamija spoke about how capital markets went from being beneficial to brokers to betterment of investors after SEBI came into play.

It was an eye-opening session as Prof. Dhamija delved into latest trends and topics like decline in primary markets, lack of retail participants and impact of various reforms on IPO pricing and performance. Finally it was time for the Valedictory session that was held in the presence of Mr. Anupam Jindal, CFO, Sterlite Technologies Limited. Prof. M. Ashraf Rizvi summarized the learnings from different sessions and highlighted the importance of hosting these conferences for dissemination of happenings in different sectors.

In his talk, Mr. Jindal used real life examples to stress on the difference between mergers and acquisitions. He talked the audience through steps involved in acquisitions and enlightened them about the risks and challenges along the way. His talk was followed by an interactive Q and A session that drew a huge response. The conference ended with presentation of Best Paper awards for the participants.

When your job is to interview founders of a startup, you immediately think of professionals who have been there and done that. But we were in a unique position as our entrepreneurs were three young, full-spirited students of PGDM Batch 2015 -17 of Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow with big dreams in their eyes.

Vaibhav Srivastava, Tammar Rizvi and Shubh Gupta came up with an idea for a Healthy Shake Cafe in a Business Proposal contest launched by Dr. Reena Agrawal, Chairperson, The Centre for Entrepreneurship. Picked from several proposals for its initiative, “Crazy Straws” came into being. Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow campus is now on high energy with these tree student entrepreneurs bringing their ideas to execution and functioning successfully even before their PGDM is completed.

The café was launched on October, 2016 by Dr. M Ashraf  Rizvi, Director, Jaipuria, Lucknow. It was a proud moment for our entrepreneurs and faculty members alike, but the seeds of the venture were sown from Day 1 at Jaipuria Lucknow.

Through its industry-oriented curriculum, E-cell initiatives, interaction sessions with corporate professionals and personality development classes, Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow tries to build entrepreneurial spirit amongst students. The initiatives build students’ confidence to go out there and achieve their dreams.

Three musketeers behind “Crazy Straws” have done just that and are gung ho about their new venture. We spoke to them about what drove them to take on the project and what their expectations from the business venture are.

According to the new entrepreneurs, the idea for the business stemmed from the need and focus on the demand. “Students often consume oily, unhealthy meals. We just thought that it would be great if there was an alternative, which we aim to provide with our healthy shakes,” they said.

The team has dedicated time for market research and intends to offer their consumers good value for money. “Of course the taste and quality of the shakes will be our primary concern. But we also intend to provide our shakes at half the market rate,” they claimed.

These entrepreneurs are optimistic about a good response and hope to make decent profits. They already have plans to keep things interesting for their consumers. “With winter coming we will make few changes to the menu; you will soon find Hot Chocolate at the café,” they said with a smile.

Dr. M Ashraf Rizvi couldn’t have been prouder of the venture. “Crazy Straws is an exuberant initiative, which will not only assist them in learning the nuances of running a business, but will provide them an opportunity to handle a business in totality,” he said.

He believes that it’s a platform for students to put management concepts into practice and hopes the enthusiasm will be passed on over batches. “I would like them to focus on the venture with commitment and dedication while working for profit with principles,” was his advice to them.

The entrepreneurs meanwhile are prepared to “shake” things up and make sure that their café is a huge success.

Second year students, specializing in Human Resources (HR) at Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow had a privilege of gaining knowledge from a Guest Session that was a part of the course on Training and Development. “CFO asks CEO ‘what if we invest in developing our people and they leave us’ and CEO said, ‘what if they don’t, and they stay?,” was the catchy theme of the session held on 12th of November. As expected it had many real life anecdotes and learning experiences for students.

The session held under the guidance of Prof. Pallavi Srivastava, Assistant Professor, Area Chairperson, HR & OB, Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow brought Mr. Vinod Chaturvedi, Chief Human Resource Officer and Head, Group Centre of Expertise – Employee Relations, Aditya Birla Group, Mumbai to the campus to share his vast experience with the students. Thrilled to be amongst young minds from the institute he set the discussion up with a session on the crucial topic of “Strategic role of HR in Employee Development”.

Mr. Chaturvedi highlighted the importance of HR strategy in the development of employees. He then spoke about strategy when he said, “What you want is vision and how you want to achieve that vision is strategy. You have to understand that today HR strategy has to be aligned to business strategy.” According to him, Business Strategy is divided into four different elements for Manufacturing, Finance / Cost, Marketing and People.

He then went on to talk about employee needs and employer needs, which are quite different. He believes understanding employee psychology is important for development. Mr. Chaturvedi said, “Two things should be seen in strategic employee development – the employee gets satisfaction in the form of employability and the organization in turn should get some value (ROI). 10% attrition is healthy in an organization as new ideas should also come in with fresh recruits.”

While sharing his experiences Mr. Chaturvedi tried to instill amongst students the fact that employee development is important as there is cost associated with employee turnover. “It involves direct cost of termination, vacancy, recruitment, Selection and Hiring, and Orientation and Training, while indirect costs are for productivity of the worker, co-worker, the supervisor, increase in defect and cost of productivity of the new hire during transition,” he spelt out.

Mr. Chaturvedi then touched upon a crucial differentiation between intelligence, which is information stored while talent is delivery of that information. He used performance-potential matrix or inverted-L model diagram used for Talent segmentation to good effect. He also added that training is task driven and development is goal driven. He then shared 70-20-10 principle of Do (results) – Share (Skills) – Learn (Knowledge) with the participants.

Finally, the expert with years of experience shared tips for those who wanted to carve a niche for themselves in the world of HR. “To be a Star HR professional you should understand the core subject and learn the core concepts taught in Organizational Behavior and HRM in the first year. You have to be human engineers because you have to understand human minds,” he ended his interactive session on a high note.