Indian Institute of Finance hosted the 7th IIF Webinar series on “Essence of Life and Growth” by Dr. Dilip Chenoy, Secretary General, FICCI, INDIA. He was also Managing Director & CEO, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) (2010-15), INDIA; Director General, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) (2004-10), INDIA and Deputy Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) (1984-2004). The Webinar was moderated by Prof. Aman Agarwal, Professor of Finance & Dean (IR) Indian Institute of Finance ( www.iif.edu) and Executive Editor, Finance India ( www.financeindia.org). The Webinar was attended by over 68 global participants from USA, Japan, UAE, Hungary, Poland, Uzbekistan, Taiwan, Malaysia, India and others.

Life means life cycle and at every stage of life cycle one grows continuously in different manner physically, socially, emotionally, psychologically and financially said Dr. Chenoy. Life and growth are inter-linked together and one thing is clear that a person can grow in every phase of life. One must learn to enjoy what one does and do what one enjoy, is the success mantra. Dr. Chenoy explained this concept with the help of his personal life experience beginning to work with various industries before joining the Chambers of Commerce and Industry. He beautifully explained the need to adapt, work hard in teams, harmonize growth with enjoyment and live the cycle of life having had a humble beginning and now rising to head the largest chamber of commerce and industry – FICCI, which has over 2,50,000 members on board from all over India and the largest number of MNCs.

Dr. Chenoy emphasised that One should not act like a robot and do things as if one is programmed to do. To feel the essence of life one must grow from being an ordinary to extra ordinary enjoying the nuances of pain, love and compassion to build a holistic life with sustained growth. According to him, in the time of uncertainty one has to have a vision, resilience and starting-ending point of work to create uncertainty into opportunity.

Advising entrepreneurs, youth and the students, he said that one should use this times of lockdown globally to invest in themselves, re-learn and grasp the nuances of personal growth and maintaining relationship within close circles and business worldwide said Dr, Chenoy. Student ought to be creative and innovative with positive mind-set; as this crisis is not a problem it is an opportunity. It is the right time to enhance our creativity to find out new ways to grow further in life and career. Investing in oneself is Investing in Life and we are blessed with this time as a welcoming opportunity going forward for all of us especially the youth building nations tomorrow.

According to Dr. Chenoy, as a citizen, there is a great opportunity to work together. We should to take learnings from this lockdown and collaboratively work towards nations building. We have to re-think the concept of globalisation because there would be a change in culture in the post-covid times. For next six months or one year we must use and follow MSD (Mask, Sanitizer & Social Distancing) and work collaboratively and compassionately said Dr. Chenoy. Taking about the monetary and fiscal initiatives undertaken by the government, he lauded the efforts and said that RBI is playing a pro-active role in inducing the required liquidity in the ecosystem. He also said there is likeliness of further financial relief for the MSME and the working class of India by the Government to smoothen the impact of liquidity crunch which has got created at the cost of Covid-19 lockdown, sharing the efforts undertaken by large number of countries worldwide.

Large number of Questions from amongst 68 participants were asked by Prof. Dr. Junzo Watada (Japan & Malaysia); Dr. Ira Rattan (Entrepreneur & Nutritional Therapist, India); Dr. Mahesh Singh (University of Szeged, Hungary), Prof. Dr. Yamini Agarwal (IIFBS, Greater Noida, India); and many others.

Indian Institute of Finance has initiated the interactive IIF Webinar Series on “Essence of Life and Growth” with the prime objective to bring forth positivity of life based on the life experiences one has gained over 3-4 decades of personal life experiences, professional life, the nation, the economy and the world at large, having seen different colours of life based on ups and downs one has witnessed.