Sitting down with Harsh Todi, the coordinator of the Economics and Finance Association (EFA), the APOGEE English Press had the opportunity to interview him about the work EFA is doing for APOGEE ‘23. EFA promotes the culture of economics and finance around the campus by holding various workshops and sessions throughout the year.  

The association is organising four events this APOGEE. The first is Stock Market Simulation (SMS), a mock stock trading competition live throughout the entire fest. People can trade stocks on an app developed by the Coding Club, with a market regulated by the EFA to promote participation and engagement. 

The second event is Bidwiser, a mock IPL auction, held in two rounds. The first round is an online cricket quiz, where the teams who answer the set questions correctly advance to the next round. The last round is an offline auction, where players will have to build a team of eleven–fifteen players from a certain budget, with the highest-ranking team winning the competition.

This year, the EFA is also organising a competition named Financial Bluff. Teams will devise various financial statements to confuse their opponents, who must weed out the true ones from the bluffs, gaining points along the way. Just like Bidwiser, the first round of this event will be online, with the winning teams advancing to the last, offline round.

The last event is an Entrepreneurship Conclave, organised in collaboration with PEP. People from various fields will provide mentorship to shortlisted startups. The top 20 startups will then pitch their products on 3rd April to an expert panel of judges consisting of venture capitalists and already established entrepreneurs, with the winner receiving a cash prize of over four lahks.

Organising such elaborate events is surely no easy task. When asked if the association faced any problems during its preparations, Harsh stated that they encountered a few small issues, but due to the fact that the EFA has grown a lot closer to each other over the years, they were able to resolve them easily.

Harsh signed off by saying that since a lot of people have worked their utmost best for the fest this year, he hopes that everyone has a great time and enjoys APOGEE to the fullest.