A BUSINESS COMPETITION OF A DIFFERENT KIND

The grand finale of IDLC presents Blueprints 2.0 in association with Dhaka Bank Ltd. was held on November 22, 2016 at North South University. A huge crowd of professionals from financial and non-financial institutions witnessed the battle royal between the three winning teams of the second instalment of the sole financial modelling competition in Bangladesh.

A shareholder or an investor, a financial analyst or a business student, whichever one is, if they are to get insight about how a specific company is doing, financial statements like the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements are the fundamental financial reports that best represent how the company has been performing over the past few years. Financial modelling is a technique of forecasting future financial statements and projecting a picture of a company or project for the upcoming years. Even though financial modelling is a skill that is a must for any financial analyst, no competitions have been held to encourage undergraduate business students to pick up this skill till Blueprints. Indeed, the competition was initiated with the broad intention of focussing young minds on the potential opportunities in the financial sector of the country.

This year, over 150 teams from 15+ universities spanning five divisions took part in the competition. "The aim is to put business students, and not just finance majors, in real life scenarios and have them implement all the knowledge learnt in classrooms," said Tashrif Ul Islam, President of NSU Finance Club.

Champions Team ICONs state their case in the finale

The competition started with its first round workshop on October 28, 2016 at the NSU campus, where around 500 students came to participants. Jane Alam Romel, Group CMO of IDLC Finance Ltd., and Management Trainees from the Structured Finance Department conducted the workshop. The workshop was followed by the case solving round. Out of the 152 teams, 32 made it to the second round.

The second round workshop was held on November 4. Once again, Structured Finance experts from IDLC Finance Ltd. conducted the session. For the second round, participants were given a case on the hotel industry in the context of Bangladesh. They had to solve and present the case on November 11 in front of the judges. Nine teams out of 32 went on to the finale. The three winning teams of Blueprints 2.0 were awarded in the presence of their 250+ fellow participants.

The winner of the evening was Team ICONS. Team Wunderkind and Team AllSpark came in second and third respectively. Azim Uddin Ahmed, Chairman of BOT, NSU; Arif Khan, CEO, IDLC Finance Limited; Dr. Atiqul Islam, Vice Chancellor, NSU; Dr. Md. Emdadul Haq, Director of Student Affairs, NSU; and Dr. Md. Mahboob Rahman, NSU SBE gave enlightening speeches addressing the crowd. The event ended with the members of NSU Finance Club congregating on the stage and sending the crowd off.

The judges’ panel for the evening critique one of the finalists

NSU Finance Club is a newly established co-curricular club under the NSU School of Business and Economics. It aims to help students experience professional development in terms of skills, ethics and personality. IDLC presents Blueprints is the flagship competition of NSU Finance Club that the club has successfully concluded for the second time.