OPTIMITY 2017: Where students become “investment gladiators”

Investment, stocks, mutual funds - these concepts may sound familiar to many, using them in everyday scenario but when it actually comes to dealing with them, a lot of them will take a step back. This was exactly what the participants of IPDC presents "OPTIMITY 2017", an investment and portfolio management competition by NSU Finance Club had to compete on. 

With a vision to create more portfolio managers and to enlighten students on investment tactics, OPTIMITY was organised to give the students a platform to experience real-world scenario of the whole investment sector. From 13 universities, a total of 138 teams registered for the first round which only shows a small scenario of competitiveness of the event. 

The purpose of the competition was to instruct the knowledge of investment and portfolio management into the growing minds of the students in order to make them more competent regardless of what their focus of study is.

OPTIMITY started with a workshop which took place on the July 28, 2017 at the NSU campus. In the workshop, a huge number of participants turned in where the stage was occupied by professionals from IPDC Finance. Nawed Wahed Chowdhury, Head of Treasury, IPDC Finance and Benozeer Ahmed, Chief Financial Officer, IPDC Finance shared their views about the event and encouraged the participants. Faculty advisor the Club, Muhammad Nasiruddin, Lecturer, Department of Accounting and Finance, NSU, inspired the participants to engage more in co-curricular activities alongside studies. The workshop was conducted by experienced finance professionals who had laid down the guidelines of the competition. 

After solving a rigorous case, only 24 teams got through to the second round from the registered teams. A different set of tasks were given to the second round participants through another second insightful workshop. Shah Wareef Hossain, Chief Operating Officer, IPDC Finance, shared his views on the importance of finance based competitions in the country. The second one was a physical round, where participants had to give presentations on the industries they were given. Four groups were formed consisting of six teams and each group was given a particular industry to work on: tannery, life insurance oil and power, and cement industry. The second round took place on August 11, 2017. 

Finally, a total of 8 teams qualified for the finale of OPTIMITY from this round, followed by the last interactive workshop to handover the tasks for the final round to the students. 

The grand finale took place on August 20, 2017. During the event, chief guest Mominul Islam, CEO and MD of IPDC Finance, and Dr. Gour Gobinda Goswami, Treasurer of North South University, praised the participants and presented crests to the valued partners of the event and most importantly to the top three winners. The top 8 teams had to go through another round of presentations and this time the panel of judges hailed from IPDC Finance and other renowned financial institutions. 

In an attempt to become the investment gladiator, Beta Bots of Institute of Business Administration, Dhaka University (IBA, DU) won the title of champions and prize money of BDT 1 lac.  Counter Logic, also from IBA, DU, received the title of 1st runners-up and pocketed BDT 60,000 and team ICONS from North South University were 2nd runners-up with BDT 40,000 as prize money.

An entire month of hard work and persistence of the members of NSU Finance Club was the fuel behind the successful completion of the grand event. The Club ended the grand finale by showering gratitude towards the title sponsor of the event, IPDC Finance, and other partners of the event who had played a very important role for the execution of the event.