The APOGEE English Press (AEP) recently interviewed Avinash Singh, the coordinator of the International Finance Student Association (IFSA), to gain insight into the association and its work during APOGEE 2023.

This is the first time IFSA is organising an event during APOGEE, a financial modelling and case competition named Merger Mystery. The online event involves the identification of merger and acquisition opportunities for the client company, where the participants will be expected to value companies, find companies and then suggest mergers and acquisitions. 

Avinash explained that the work for the competition began two months before the actual event, and included research on how to produce a quality case competition that would make sense in the real world and require a lot of business acumen to solve. He also said that a lot of time went into drafting the case and fine-tuning it. The major challenges they faced were associated with promotion. They had to do a lot of work on brand-building as BITS is an engineering college and not a B-school, and it was their first time organising an event. Another challenge was getting a sponsor for the event. 

Avinash mentioned that managing many people in an online event could be a technical hassle, so they have assigned three to four people from their team to deal with that. They will also have a roughly two-day time period to judge about 300 case studies and decide who progresses to the next round.

IFSA is a new organisation on campus and its team currently consists of about 30–35 people. Avinash’s experience as a coordinator has been great as the StuCAAns and CoStAAns have been really helpful to the association. Avinash encourages anyone interested in finance or who wants to explore the business world to participate in the event.