The Small Investor.....................

My 2nd year college life was characterised by absence of even a bit of the company fellow friends ,Romans and countrymen desired, cherished...

To blame were people like Mapara who've so cunningly cajoled me into crazy propositions..........
(The quantumn of time I've spent talking to him over the phone and in real life would have been enough to term us "happy & ..." & enough for me to forge friendship bonds with the famous and fortunate feminines )...anyways no point crying over spilled milk..

SUMMER PROJECT FOR BEYOND CHALK & TALK...WHERE THEORY MEETS PRACTICE

Our project was titled " The Small Investor.....Investment Avenues " ....
Summer Project because it starts in the summers ( April'04)
Unfortunately / Fortunately the season changed by the time the Final Presentation was made ( Feb'05)
On a high-sounding note it aimed at intellectually empowering him (Her..also) within the ambit of constraints faced by him( Her again ...emphatically)

Plz note any mention henceforth of "His " basically also refers to "Her" ...The summer project was my last chance to salvage my sagging fortunes by investing ininvestment advice...at least I could win some intelligent girl's heart by rendering rock-solid consultancy services

Excerpts of my first corporate interview in ABN Amro

The first lessons of financial planning learnt were:

To begin with
One must have a clear vision of what he wants to achieve in life ..........
"an intelligent girl ... girlfriend "....my heart replied instantaneously

One must plan the time horizon for achieving these goals .....
" as soon as possible ...bang on was the reply"

More gyan ensued ......

One must begin early in life...to make the power of compounding work wonders for you ....
"I must start searching for her today itself... i am already late ! "

That you should opt for a diversified portfolio ....that mitigates the risk...
"Ok , then just Shrinidhi would not do....I must approach a few more of girls of her type ..putting all your eggs in one basket is suicidal "


We had begun our project on a sticky wicket ...especially me .....
Our mentor Hanif initially did not select me in his team because I was smiling all the time ....signs that I wasn't serious enough. Then only when the esteemed chosen ones literally shocked our mentor Mr Hanif with the initial draft of the project and one of them had a motor cycle accident ( Divine Intervention! ) that I was offered the job...no salaries though...
Anurag Singal accepted it with a pinch of salt officially .... albeit he was ecstatic in his heart of hearts ...

Preparing these projects I had thought would entail visiting www.google.com and clicking on " I am feeling lucky" after puching in the project heading
If you copied from several sites , it would be termed research !
If you copied from only one site , you'd be blamed for plagiarism !!

My perception was highly mistaken...Infact by the end I was basically dumbfounded by the adversityof my experiences..
When I actually got into the nitty-gritty of preparing one...life rocked!!!

Each day as I dozed off to the cozy world of my drmzs , Mapara interrupted with unfailing regularity at 10pm and amidst dreary eyes and yawns I would answer his incessant questions on the text, the powerpoint, the survey .......

Very rarely has it occurred in my life that I have approached strangers on the road....but this time I was adamant to harass them with a volley of questions ...spending as much time as THEY were willing to waste....you see to get a first hand feel of the ground reality (the viewpoint of the actual investor) was essential!!!

This time I even visited Kabadi shops ....requesting the Kabadiwala uncles to search for old editions of Business Worlds and India Todays!!!! Those decade old photographs and statistics would be manna for my project ...same for age old libraries, ancient almirahs in my house ....... The best was a 1993 India Today...

I even went to the extent of stealing my neighbour's mail just because it was a newsletter from ICICI and I suspected there would be be interesting cartoons...to scan and insert in my powerpoint presentation...and believe me they actually worked wonders

Befriended an old enemy just because his elder brother pursuing MBA (Finance) could bail me out at opportune moments .....

The list goes on and on......

Hiring for Rs 500 (but later settling the deal at Rs 200) a computer professional to design an animation in Flash....

Hiring (but finally not paying) another one to record the Kotak Mahindra .."If Money Would Grow On Trees" clipping beamed on CNBC

Keeping a close tab on my competitors... Credit Cards, Corporate Governance, Call Centres,Whistle Blowing, ITC, Pepsi, Shoppers Stop....

Hours spent analysing (and even manipulating to my convenience) the investment survey data ...

OUR PREPARATION WAS REALLY COOL ...AFTER ALL IT WAS A SUMMER PROJECT
But on the screening day we were goofed.... so engrossed we were in the powerpoint that we simply neglected the accompanying speech ....made a fool of ourselves simply because both me and Mapara were staring at each other bereft of words....
To add to our woes the political mandarins somehow decided ( and this was atrocious)that the scores would be carried forward to the Main Presentation (for the first time in St. Xavier's history of annual presentations)....we were ranked fifth .....only the top three would be awarded certis of excellence ....

"Often we stand at life's crossroads ..viewing what we think is the end
God has a different plan for us and says
It's not the end ... just a bend "

Surely we would begin the Final Presentation on the backfoot.... but should we take it lying down??????

The next 3 days ...72 hours ...we waged a war against the impending failure .....against the political conspicary...

The other 2 hitherto dormant members of our team Vikash and Shreyans stepped in at this critical juncture

Takes and retakes .... We had to be perfect at our speech...we forced Mapara to mug up his portion literally at gunpoint....he was the biggest risk factor ....

The D Day

12 minutes sharp for our resurrection ....
peering at us were the corporate czars from the top-notch companies .......
our hearts palpitated

Mapara lived up to his reputation ...faltered thrice ...introduced me on-stage as the person to his right though I was standing to his left ... I couldn't resist myself from hurling abuses!(Luckily no one noticed though)

The Kotak Mahindra clipping hanged .. By God's grace Vikash proceeded to the next slide.....

After the initial skirmishes , the plane finally took off and Boy the audience was enthralled ...our Powerpoint visually dazzled one and all ...

As I signed off wishing the crowd Happy Investing...a thunderous applause greeted us !!

We had stretched ourselves beyond the limits of our imagination .....and now we were hoping against hope ....

Can we storm into a top three ???

Certificate of Excellence / a mere Certificate of Participation ??

Our hearts palpitated once again ...

HURRAY

We stormed into the top three..albeit third ...

The winners take it all...a grand treat for the four of us...we enjoyed life to the hilt that evening

IN WAR RESOLUTE

IN DEFEAT DEFIANT

IN VICTORY MAGNANIMOUS

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Anurag 01:22  1 comment