A Seminar titled “RETHINKING ON MICRO FINANCE IN THE CURRENT SCENARIO” was organized at the institute campus. Dignitaries from different segments of BFSI sector attended the seminar and conveyed their views on the concept of Micro Finance.

Microfinance in today’s times assumes special importance with a large section of poor and marginalized section having very small requirements of loans and there being not many organizations to effectively cater to their needs. The exorbitant rates of interest charged by private moneylenders from such poor borrowers, in absence of many genuine lending organizations, is also an important issue. In simple terms, it is a movement whose principal objective is to create "a world in which as many poor and near-poor households have permanent access to an appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, and fund transfers.”

The introductory session of the seminar was marked by the welcome speech by Dr. M G Shirahatti, Director General – OIM & OSB. The seminar was formally inaugurated by Dr. Abhay Pethe, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Mumbai, who articulated the vision and objective of the seminar in a subtle manner.

Following the inaugural address by Dr. Pethe, there were several important sessions by eminent personalities on various topics of common interest. The deliberations at these sessions have been summarized in the paragraphs that follow.

Mr. N C Khulbe, General Manager, Priority Sector, Bank of India, discussed the aspect relating to the failure of the Indian banking industry in reaching the remote semi-urban and rural areas of the country. He touched upon the issues like exploitation of the rural poor by the village moneylenders, exorbitant rates of interest charged, lack of suitable guidance and help to the poor, farmer suicides etc. He also talked about the increasing problems of the urban poor, the initiative taken by NABARD in contributing INR 325,000 crores loan for agricultural development, RBI’s intervention to direct banks during December 2009 for inclusion of 72,000 villages in the country with population of more than 2000 and introduction of KISSAN credit cards to be used for loans on fertilizers, Insurance etc.

The 2-day seminar ended with the session by Mrs. Radhika Hari Bhakti, Director, Spandana Microfinance Limited, who covered the current macroeconomic scenario including the recent subprime crisis in US, microfinance issues and other relevant aspects. She embarked upon the fact that microfinance institutions started as non-profit organizations to help women in the low income group. She further emphasized on the objective of microfinance to reach as many persons as possible and stressed that the microfinance loans should be considered as the joint liability of the groups (SHGs).

11th March 2011
As already reported in the previous issue of the Campus News, a seminar was organized on 13th October 2010 to welcome the dignitaries from the University of Southern Indiana, USA and to discuss all relevant aspects to the proposed faculty and students exchange programme between the Southern Indiana University and OIM.

The dignitaries, namely, Dr. Ronald .S. Rochon, Provost & Professor of Education at Southern Indiana University and Dr. Sudesh Majumdar, Professor, Southern Indiana University were invited to OIM/OSB at the initiative of our esteemed Director General and Dr. S A Majumdar, the leading Economist and the Former Advisor to the Reserve Bank of India.

The above seminar has been of special importance in view of our recent initiative to establish the “Centre for Advanced Research in Management” to promote research and consultancy (this initiative is during advanced stage and we are expecting formal approval for the research centre shortly).

15th January 2011
Considering the crucial role of both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs in creation of business enterprises and consequent job creation – a seminar with the captioned title was organized on 15th January 2011. The resource persons were Dr. A.B Pandit, Professor, Chemical Engineering Department, ICT Mumbai, Mr. Arun K Datar, Director, Puraj Chemicals/Sitaram chemicals, Mr. V.P Kamath, CEO Apollo Hospitals, Dr. D.N Bhowmick Professor & Dean, ICT Mumbai, Mr. V.S Bhakre, Senior Consultant and Visiting Faculty, Former Head, Polymer Division, CIBA and Mr. M.R Hulyalkar, Paint-tech Consultants, Mumbai.

The seminar was hosted by student representatives, Mr. Rameez Haslani and Shefali Nair – MMS Second Year Students. The programme started with the welcome address by Dr. M. Sreedharan, Director, OIM, brief outline of the programme by Prof. Waghmare and an audio visual presentation on OIM/OSB by the students. Prof. Bhakre, thereafter, made a presentation on the theme and objectives of the seminar. This was followed by various business sessions by guest speakers. The sessions were quite interesting and evoked a lot of interactive response from the audience.

The above seminar was organized by OIM/OSB on 25th January 2011. Following dignitaries were invited to the seminar as resource persons:

• Mr. Sanjay Das, an Engineer/MBA with 38 years industrial experience and Ex. CEO of Essel Group of Industries;

• Mr. N Muthuswamy, an Engineer with 45 years industrial experience and Managing Director of Quest System Pvt. Ltd; and

• Mr. Udit Chaudhary, an Engineer and diploma in management with 30 years experience in industry and Director, Metior Advisory.

All the guest speakers provided meaningful insights to the students sharing their vast Industry experience. Mr. Muthuswamy explained the concept of QU TEST for deciding the choice of the career for all MMS final semester students based on detailed scientifically developed tests. A special offer was also made to OIM students for a package deal comprising career choice and personalized counseling.

The seminar was a grand success and was very much appreciated by the audience keeping in view the importance of the theme of the seminar as also relevancy and quality of the contents and discussions.

7th March 2011
A guest lecture on the analysis of the Union Budget 2011-12 was organized for the benefit of OIM/OSB students on 7th March 2011 in the seminar hall of the institute. The Guest Speaker for this session of vital importance was Mr. Abhijit Deshpande – a practicing Chartered Accountant with over two decades of experience in internal and statutory audits, corporate taxation, project finance etc.

The session was of about 2 hours duration and covered various factual aspects of the Union Budget 2011-12 including direct taxes, indirect taxes, impact of taxes and levies on various industry sectors etc. Apart from these, there were vibrant discussions on other important aspects like role of agriculture, service sector, manufacturing industry, impact of crude oil prices, FDI in retail, PSU Disinvestment and crucial role of infrastructure development. These aspects were suitably captured and brought to the notice of participants.

There was all round appreciation and favorable audience response as was evident from the question-answer session at the end of the programme.

12th March 2011
A seminar titled “How to analyze & understand equity and foreign exchange Markets” was organized on 12th March 2011 in the seminar hall of the institute for the benefit of OIM and OSB students. The seminar was arranged in collaboration and with support from the leading investment firm – “Asit C Mehta Investment Intermediates Limited” (ACMIIL). ACMIIL has been in existence for about 25 years and offers one-stop solution to Indian entities for their financial service needs.

The main speaker at the seminar was Mr. Kamta Upadhaya who had active support from his colleagues Mr. Piyush Wadekar and Mr. Premjit Singh. Mr. Upadhaya started his talk stressing the need for students to get into regular savings habit and to practice financial discipline. He covered with ease many important and useful concepts like the need for a learning orientation among students coupled with knowledge gaining attitudes, taking up organized financial planning and importance of undertaking proper investigation in matters relating to investments.  He also cautioned that one should distinguish clearly between safe returns and the best returns from an investment.

Mr. Upadhaya discussed with the audience (both the students and faculty members) about various important aspects related to investments – including demat accounts, trading accounts, IPOs, mutual funds, commodity and currency derivatives etc. He also guided the audience to clearly set their investment targets with regard to short-term gains and long term investments. Mr. Upadhaya also gave an overview of the foreign exchange markets to the seminar participants.

The session by Mr. Upadhaya supported by other two guest speakers was very well received by the students and the faculty members. There was an unusually long question-answer session when the queries from participants were answered by the guest speakers. On the whole, the seminar was a grand success.