Jobaaj Stories
Hi there! I am Kuldeep Sharma, a CA with primary expertise in corporate banking, financial modeling, and investment banking, but most importantly, in Mentorship!
And here’s the journey of how I traversed through life assuming different mantels at different points of my life, from being a student to a CA, to a banking professional, to a financial consultant, to finally taking up the role of a mentor.
Raised in the east of the country, I was born and brought up in Guwahati!
My family had always consisted of jobholders, so education had always been my top priority.
I’d be wrong to say though that I have always wanted to go the finance way.
Because I specifically remember hoping to choose the science stream to go on further to prepare for the UPSC.
But at the time, I couldn’t find any good science colleges(I had been an average student in school), so I finally took up a commerce degree with the University of Guwahati.
Traversing through the academics
The college experience was overwhelming for me considering the fact that I was moving on from being in my school batch of 20-30 students to being in a college class of 200+ students.
But I was determined to make it big. One thing, I’d like to add here is that in our case, we could pursue our 11th and 12th from the college itself. And the college experience proved extremely nurturing for me. So, in 2012, I was done with my higher secondary education AND managed to secure a state rank.
2012 was also the year that I was pursuing the CA foundation and had cleared it.
I then went on to clear my CA intermediate in 2013 post which, I started my articleship with Singhi and co. as a finance intern.
In parallel to that, I was also pursuing the CS course. So while in the first year of my articleship, I also had the looming preparation of the CS program. Fortunately, college life taught me well about how to manage time and work efficiently. Consequently, I was able to clear the CS Executive qualification too by the year 2014.
A glance at my career progression
My articleship was a different learning experience altogether. I was placed in the project finance department. And in many ways, that set the tone for the rest of my career.
The articleship was perhaps the most important and enriching phase of my entire career for it provided me with the foundation of my skills. I was learning about project financing, working capital, debt restructuring, loan documentation, and even international financing.
By the end of the articleship, I had become the head of my team.
And It gave me the opportunity to directly interact with the clients and people at higher positions in banks so I also got a good network going on by then.
By 2017, I had cleared my CA final and my articleship period.
I then went on to my first job as a CA in Yes Bank as the Deputy Manager.
Although most CAs start out with retail banking, my work experience helped me start out with core corporate banking where I was working on corporate financing of deals worth hundreds of crores.
The experience helped me gain a strong foot over the principles of corporate banking and financial analysis.
Kicking up the mentorship phase
Ever since 8th grade, I had always been involved with teaching. During my work with Yes bank, I also opened up a small institute where I used to teach on weekends.
Simultaneously, I also used to upload educational and training videos on youtube.
And it was around this time that CA Aaditya Jain saw one of my videos and got in contact with me.
Even then, the Aaditya Jain classes were a renowned name across the country, so when he offered to onboard me as a trainer, I felt delighted at the prospect so he called me to Delhi, and off I went.
That’s how my journey with mentorship took a solidified turn.
During my time with CA Aaditya Jain, I became a full-time mentor, teaching hundreds of students, making study materials, and even writing informative blogs.
The experience taught me a lot about how to present complex concepts like corporate banking, and financial analysis and break them down into easily digestible ideas.
The journey of training over 13000+ students pan India
Even during my venture with Aaditya Jain classes, I was already working as a financial consultant for a firm.
During this time, I was contacted by Jobaaj learnings, a pan-India Edtech to share my experiences and learnings with students all over India.
Having been a banking professional for the majority of my professional life, I had significant experience in corporate finance, financial modeling, investment banking, and more.
And Jobaaj learnings gave me the platform to channel the mentor inside of me more passionately.
Till now, I have been fortunate enough to train over 13000+ students across India and I continue to go strong!
The mentorship journey has been incredibly enriching and being able to help so many students has been a fulfilling experience. I agree that sometimes managing both my work and my mentorship gets challenging.
But all those positive testimonials and feedbacks from my students keep motivating me to perform even better!
Advice for students seeking a career in investment banking
I have always believed that, unlike technical and IT professions, finance professions still require individuals to have a certain academic qualification to board job roles.
And this is true for both finance and non-finance students. So my advice for both finance and non-finance students remains the same.
Start acquiring qualifications!
Go for professional courses like the CPA, CMA, or CFA whichever aligns with your career goals.
For non-finance students, it’d be beneficial to go for a short-term upskilling course along with your long-term professional course.
And then you must seek to pursue an internship or a project by which you can gain practical experience in your field of qualification. That’s the fundamental way to start a career in most finance and accounting fields.
In the case of investment banking, the ideal program to pursue would be the CFA. Since it's a long-term program, it would also be ideal for you to follow some short upskilling courses like MS excel, financial modeling, etc., that could fine-tune your concepts and help you land practical internships.
Remember, investment banking is a challenging profession. So you’ll absolutely need to stay consistent with your efforts and take up as many challenging roles as possible, whether they be in your internships or jobs.
And hey! If you still get any doubts or lack clarity regarding your career, then I am here for you!
Feel free to hit me up on my Linkedin if you have got any career doubts, and I’ll try my best to resolve them.
Thanks for Reading!
PS: I also hold FREE weekly workshops wherein I train students in financial modeling right from scratch. So feel free to register for the workshop, and I’ll see you there.
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