Courses for bourses are a hit

Avishkar, Nirakar and Sakar. No, they are not triplets but names of the state-of-the-art classrooms at the Bombay Stock Exchange.

And the new breed of people flocking there are not brokers, but college students, retired officials, executives, housewives and just about anybody.

Why? That's because both the BSE and the National Stock Exchange, which have been offering courses to wannabe investors, are now dishing out new courses by the day. The Sensex has rallied more than 1,300 points in the last five months and a new kind of investor is rushing to the bourses.

Take S Rao, an engineer in his late fifties, who opted for voluntary retirement from Indian Oil Corporation. He recently attended a four-day general course on the stock market at the BSE Training Institute.

His tryst with investing began in the early 1990s when he applied for initial public offers. He became a trader in the last one year. Then why join BTI?

"To get more information and in-depth knowledge on the stock markets," says Rao. Today, a wisened Rao prefers long-term investments to trading, though he does indulge in it occasionally.

Or take Suhaib Qasmi, a first-year commerce student at a Mumbai college. "I plan to invest in the market and wanted to arm myself with correct information," he says. By the time he completes his graduation and gets a job, he wants to be well prepared to tap the stock market.

Learning the rudiments of the market is something that is becoming mandatory for a new breed of investors. "With falling bank interest rates, stocks with their high returns are an attractive investment option," says Rao. Also, the abolition of dividend tax in the last Budget has once again made investing in the stock market worthwhile.

That is why business management students Tanuka Majumdar and Habib Lokhandey joined BTI during their term break. Says Majumdar: "We are interested in the capital market and would like to know everything about the market before we take a decision to trade."

They have just attended a certificate course on the stock markets and plan to go back for a derivatives course soon.

If trading is the priority for some, investing in safer avenues is what others like Maya Kapadia, 50, are looking for. Having opted for a VRS from a large engineering firm, Kapadia wants to invest her booty in mutual funds.  Not too familiar with the bourses, she will soon do a course in derivatives and mutual funds.

A more ambitious Rina Sampat makes no bones about why she picked on the stock market course. A marketing executive at a brokerage firm, Sampat is candid:  "I want to further my career in this field and I believe that proper knowledge is very important for it."

This new-found thirst for knowledge has delighted both the BSE and NSE.

Says Bandiram Prasad, chief general manager, Capital Market Training, BSE: "The Exchange sincerely believes that investors must learn about the available financial products, ways of managing risks, details of procedures and documentation which they must complete in order to protect themselves." That was the objective of setting up BTI in 1989.

Today, its training buffet offers 30 programmes. From the basic stock market course to derivatives, corporate governance, exchange traded funds and cross currency rupee options, the menu is long winding. The fees range from Rs 500 for shorter courses to Rs 2,000 for longer ones.

And the classrooms here could give Steven Spielberg a complex. Teaching aids include an electronic copy board, which give out printouts of what the faculty writes on it. Then there are the customary computers, projectors and a fancy audio system.

The NSE's certification courses commenced in 1998. Its Certification in Financial Markets is an online testing system to gauge expertise in nine modules like derivatives, NSDL's depository operations, capital markets and mutual funds. The enrollment fee for each module is Rs 500.

According to a BSE programme co-ordinator, investors today are more keen on technical and fundamental analysis than earlier. Registrations for these courses are up from 50 a month six months back to 200 now.

Says C Vasudevan, head of BTI: "Even the participants are younger, educated and outside the broking community like students and management professionals." Adds a BSE broker: "The rate at which it is launching courses, the BSE will soon cease to be an exchange and become a training institute."