IIT Kharagpur Students among the Winners of India Finals of CFA Institute Research Challenge 2019-2020
A five-member student team from IIT Kharagpur has qualified for the Asia Pacific round of the CFA Institute Research Challenge 2019-2020. Along with IIM Ahmedabad and IIFT Delhi, the team from IIT Kharagpur have been won the India Finals of this Global level competition held on February 8, 2020. The Asia Pacific round is scheduled to be held on March 18-19 2020 in Seoul, South Korea. The AP Challenge will consist of one winner from each Member Society of the Asia Pacific Region, typically about 16-18 countries.
The final year students Shubham Maheshwari (Dual Degree, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering), Satwik Bansal (Dual Degree, Agricultural and Food Engineering), Daksh Thakkur (Dual Degree, Aerospace Engineering), Ritika Agarwal (Dual Degree, Agricultural and Food Engineering) and Tanay Jagani (Dual Degree, Agricultural and Food Engineering) who are all currently pursuing M.Tech. in Financial Engineering were mentored by Prof. Abhijeet Chandra from Vinod Gupta School of Management, the business school of IIT Kharagpur.
“A rigorous multi-disciplinary academic curriculum along with industry-ready skill-training has helped our students achieve this success at CFA Research Challenge India leg, along with other top b-schools of the country. IIT KGP’s team being only an undergraduate team has stood out in the competition mostly participated by MBA students. Financial Engineering, our unique interdisciplinary program run by the departments of Mathematics, Humanities & Social Sciences and Vinod Gupta School of Management, has always been appreciated by the industry. With our students competing with the best teams of Asia-Pacific region, we will mark our global footprints in financial research and valuation as well,” said Prof. Chandra.
The other finalists for India round included IIM Udaipur, IIM Calcutta, IIM Trichy, IIM Kozhikode, NMIMS. The teams qualified through the respective zonal rounds which witnessed participation from 59 leading business schools from across the country. The finalists presented their equity research on Reliance Nippon, HDFC Life, BATA and Oberoi Realty. The judges panel consisted of industry luminaries viz., Mr. Pankaj Tibrewal, Sr. Vice President & Equity Fund Manager, Kotak AMC, Mr. Varun Gupta, MD, Duff & Phelps (Asia Pacific Leader, Valuation Advisory Services and Country Leader, India) and Mr. Namit Arora, CFA, Managing Partner, IndGrowth Capital.
“It has been a thorough learning experience for us to participate in the CFA Institue Research Challenge. The competition has provided us with a platform to perform equity research under the able guidance of industry leaders of the investment management industry. We are looking forward to the Asia Pacific Regional round in Seoul, South Korea ,” opined partcipants Daksh Thakkur and Shubham Maheshwari.
The CFA Institute Research Challenge is an annual global competition that provides university students with hands-on mentoring and intensive training in financial analysis. Students work in teams to research and analyze a publicly-traded company — sometimes even meeting face-to-face with company management. Each team writes a research report on their assigned company with a buy, sell, or hold recommendation and may be asked to present and defend their analysis to a panel of industry professionals.
With content contributions from CFA Society India, CFA Institute Research Challenge in India