Guest Lecture

The Placement cell of Vivekananda School of Business Studies (VSBS) organized a Guest lecture of Mr. Pradeep Bhalla for the second year students across courses & semesters on the 12th of March, 2019. He is a graduate from Delhi university and MBA from FMS (Delhi University). He has an experience of almost 30 years in the corporate world.

He started his interaction with an acronym WIIFM – What’s In It For Me, he explained that the prime focus of his lecture will be his life experiences and what we can learn (or unlearn) from them. He said it is good to have wants and highlighted money, peace of mind, a good family etc. as the basic wants of everyone. He said a person must know what he want from his/her life particularly young millennial who are part of the new & exciting GenZ. According to him, 90% of people don’t have a plan for their life and they prefer to go with the flow which is wrong. Most leaders have a plan – “If you plan your work you work your plan”, a quote he said.

He then shifted his focus to “Discovering one’s inner self” i.e One must discover his/her passion or anything he/she is best in doing. A person should try to make a profession out of his/her passion then he/she will definitely succeed. He coined another acronym KSA where K is Knowledge, S is Skill and A is attitude; collectively these three traits shape a person’s professional life.

He emphasized on how data is nowadays everywhere, but what a person takes out of it is information and what he makes out of it is knowledge. He said knowledge can be gained from anywhere but skill of application of knowledge is provided by educational institutions. If a person knows how to apply the knowledge, he/she will change their way of life.

According to him, being focused is very important. He said being focused till the point of being selfish is not bad. He also warned that we may not take comfort for granted. He added that our strengths are much greater than weaknesses. A person should make his/her strengths so powerful that they overshadow their weakness. He believes only a person with right attitude and aptitude can reach high altitude in life.

Finally he said that, it is very important to keep investing in yourself. If you invest in yourself, it will increase your value. Building a true image is very important as people like honesty, so if you’re honest it will help your image grow in the eyes of people. He ended the session by saying “Take your work seriously but don’t take yourself seriously”.

On 20th February, 2019, the Finance and Economics society of VSBS invited Mr. Dishanshu Tripathi as the key-note speaker to address the students who were interested in participating in the season 7 of the biggest national virtual trading competition called “StockMIND”. He is a graduate from Lucknow University and has worked with IBS Hyderabad and many other reputed colleges. He is currently Senior Regional Manager with ICICI Direct Centre for Financial Learning (CFL).

He started off with a thought-provoking question of what exactly do we mean by the term “Wealth” and what are the possible ways to create it. He asked the students as to whether the creation of wealth involves risk or not. He then discussed the pre-requisites of entrepreneurship or investing in general, they are as follows-

1. Reality check your potential for building a business. 

2. Seek evidence of market opportunity to balance your passion.

3. Double check the arithmetic of your business model.

4. Buffer your resource estimates by at least 20%.

5. Interact with real customers to validate passion through their feedback.

6. Plan for an extended effort continued learning and personal balance.

He further elaborated the concept of stocks and how efficiently one can analyze and forecast their movements on trading bourses. He quoted some real life examples and demonstrated through videos how one can start early and small, this is the investment mantra that none other than the legendary investor Warren Buffet agrees with. He explained the role and functionality of India’s capital markets regular SEBI and quoted it as the best regulator. Many students asked him queries pertaining to equity trading, mutual funds derivatives etc.

Finally he introduced the concept of “StockMIND” and made students understand the process of registration. Over 200 students registered for the trading game which will continue for 7 trading days. The winners will get great prizes and everyone shall receive the participation certificate issued by NISM and ICICI Direct. The session was concluded by students registering for the program followed by vote of thanks by Dr. Indira Bharadwaj, Dean, VSBS. Mr. Dishanshu was finally presented with a memento by Dr. Anuj Aggarwal.