Finance & Investment Cell

Yearbook Report 2009-2010

Here’s what a day, a couple of weeks prior to an event in the life of a member(more often than not a first year junior member) of the Finance & Investment Cell turns out like. It starts with us being allocated stuff to do, two or three extremely comprehensive meetings, people coming on time, people turning up late, people not turning up at all (you get the picture :P)...It is generally followed by two weeks of extensive running around, rounds of publicity, which are, by far the most entertaining(and constructive) part of the job. Someone dropping his cell in a mud pool, the guys begging to be sent to LSR and Miranda, returning from NSIT at 9:30 at night, posters being torn off, travelling around Kamla Nagar looking for appropriate locations to display our sweat and toil...and what normally keeps us going, is that all of this, turns out to be worth it in the end, the tumultuous response from colleges, interaction with new people, the feeling of having worked hard and knowing it, it’s worth every little effort.

There are the seniors, who kick you out of rooms, busy with the private and confidential, "Guys, we love you, but you really need to go now!" or the efficient management, "Guys, I hope I'm not being too rash, but please this work has to be done!"

Our first F&IC meeting last year was a precursor of the challenges that lay ahead. Karan Nagpal, the president-cum-photographer of the society, began the discussion “Our first major event of the year is DreaMerger. We started DreaMerger two years back, last year we expanded it to all of Delhi University and this year we plan to do more, do it better and also come up with  new events.” Not only did we have the DreaMerger last year, with participation from all over Delhi, subsequently, we also flooded his inbox with proposal after proposal of new ideas and competitions – the Marketing Game, the Entrepreneurship Cell, the Futures Cell, the FLC and new events for our national fest, the Das Capital.

Nipun Malhotra and Pallavi Jain, our diminutive new Vice-President, led the brigade of change last year. They got entrepreneur after entrepreneur to come and deliver talks for the Entrepreneurship Cell. But one thing that we found common to all, was their eccentricity! When the MD of McDonald's, India, talks about driving a sports car at 248 km/h you sit up and listen. Isn't it these bits of normality in their abnormally extraordinary lives that makes them seem within reach? If they can, why can't we?

Someone put it beautifully in a nutshell, "We don't know what we will do twenty years down the line, all we really know is that we want to make a meaningful difference to the lives of a large number of people."

This thought led us to the Futures Cell, created by us, the first years, to help clear some of the doubts
of our foggy understanding of the future, our career, and what lies in store. Despite accusations of being a ‘cell-generating exercise’, by the end of an amazing second talk, we realized that more such meaningful, career-oriented talks are actually what students like us need, and so, that is exactly what we aim to do this year.

Not to forget our newsletter, the WTF (that stands for With The Fool, for all those of you who were wondering), this year, Karan and Puneet had to painstakingly encourage a lot of us to write, but what we produced was refreshingly different from heavy-academic stuff. The WTF was, and will remain to be, to make finance easier for the lay man. We had three issues last year, but we are raring to cross at least half a dozen this year.

Another successful new venture last year was the Marketing Game. Although it took a little bit of convincing on our part that it wasn’t a rehash of Ad-Mad, in the end, the event, with its attention to financial details and knowledge, spoke for itself.

Towards the latter part of the year, what we found ourselves getting more and more serious about, was the Financial Literacy Campaign. Not exactly what the name suggests, it was our attempt, as students of this college, ardent lovers of finance, and a genuinely interested lot of people, to secure a slightly, if not hugely better future for our college workers, our “Karamcharis”. The F&I in collaboration with the Social Service League took the initiative to associate with the Sewa Bank in providing these people an option to save, to grow, and the right to lead better lives.

But it’s time now for a reality check! What almost every current student in college is aware of is the fact, that the Finance & Investment Cell is known for its luncheons and dinners. Being one of the busiest and most hard working societies in college, we share this little belief of “Working hard, and partying harder!” and hence, after we get over with the countless events and competitions and talks and room bookings, whatever time we are left with, we spend it dining with what most of us now call, our “Second Family”.

Writing this now at the end of the year, I go back to the DreaMerger parable. F&I is more about creativity in finance, more about getting to learn everything about college and more about being together than just being a society.