Advice From Industry Leaders: Build A Career in Finance

A finance degree opens the door; it does not walk you through it. That was the honest, repeated message when three senior industry leaders addressed MBA students at Parul University’s Faculty of Management, in a finance orientation designed to connect the classroom to the real financial sector. Between them, the speakers, from Religare Broking, Dhaneshwari Commodities, and HDFC Bank, brought decades of experience, and their advice adds up to one of the clearest practical guides you will find on how to build a career in finance. Here is what they told the next generation of finance professionals.

The first myth to drop, as the Dean of the Faculty of Management framed it, is that finance means accountancy. Modern finance is a vast ecosystem spanning data analytics, risk management, digital banking, investment banking, and equity research, offering many more paths than students often imagine. The stakes are high because finance sits at the centre of every business, a point the Associate Dean put memorably.

Marketing creates demand and operations deliver products, but finance decides if a company lives or dies.
– Dr. Rahul Raj, Associate Dean, Faculty of Management, Parul University

There is a geographic advantage in this too. Studying in Gujarat places students close to GIFT City, India’s flagship international financial services hub, and near the centre of the country’s financial ambitions. The message to students was to think big about where finance can take them.

Across all three speakers, one theme was constant: technical and digital skills are no longer optional. The tools repeatedly named were practical and learnable, and students were urged to build them before graduating:

• Excel, Python, and Power BI for analysis, modelling, and turning data into decisions.
• Daily reading of the business press such as the Economic Times or Business Standard, to track markets and connect the dots.
• Core financial literacy such as understanding metrics like EPS and the P/E ratio, so you can judge whether a number is actually a good investment.

The logic is simple: qualifications get your foot in the door, but demonstrable skills decide how far and how fast you rise.

Perhaps the most counter-intuitive advice from Mr. Varun K. Mehta, Zonal Head and Vice President at Religare Broking, was this: do not run from sales. His own career began not at a quiet desk but on the ground, calling clients, and he credits that ground-level experience as the foundation of everything that followed. Many senior finance executives, he noted, come from a sales background, because sales teaches you the customer, the product, and resilience in a way no desk role can. A strong sales record, he added, adds real brand value to a young professional, and it is often the most financially rewarding path of all.

He paired this with blunt first-job advice that cuts against common social-media wisdom: stay in your first job for at least three years rather than hopping for small salary bumps. Your first job is remembered for a lifetime, he said, and the depth you build by staying, understanding a company properly, is worth more than a series of quick moves.

Mr. Anjal Patel, Director of Dhaneshwari Commodities and a veteran of more than two decades in asset management, delivered a clear reality check: an MBA alone is no longer enough to stand out. He recalled a candidate whose Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation made them stand out instantly. His advice was specific and actionable:

• Pick your target sector by your second year among banking, financial services, and capital markets.
• Pursue the relevant NISM certifications (from the National Institute of Securities Markets), such as the mutual fund distribution certification, which are effectively mandatory for many distribution roles.
• Go beyond “plain vanilla” products. Mutual funds are now a basic offering; to excel, understand high-net-worth products like Portfolio Management Services (PMS) and Alternative Investment Funds (AIF), which demand different skills.

His broader point: the industry rewards those who keep learning and certifying, not those who stop at their degree.

Ms. Ruchita Gupte of HDFC Bank, herself a Parul University alumna, gave students a clear map of where a banking career can actually go. She outlined three core segments and advised choosing based on your real strengths rather than a job title or salary:

• Sales and Relationship Management: the backbone of banking, covering accounts (CASA), wealth products, and loans, built on client relationships.
• Credit and Risk Management: a desk-based role assessing loan eligibility by reading income documents and credit reports such as CIBIL.
• Operations and Servicing: the post-sanction engine, handling documentation, disbursements, and recoveries.

Align your choice with the daily reality of the role, she urged, not with the designation on the business card.

Ms. Gupte’s deeper message dismantled another myth: that finance is only about numbers. In practice, she argued, finance is about people, relationships, and communication. Marketing skills are essential in banking because they teach you to position a product, understand customer psychology, and build lasting trust. Crucially, that skill carries an ethical duty: products must be sold honestly, and mis-selling avoided at all costs, because a customer’s trust, once lost, is rarely regained. The best professionals, she suggested, genuinely put themselves in the customer’s shoes, and even study competitors, through exercises like mystery shopping, to understand where they can serve better.

On personal investing, the speakers were strikingly united, and their advice doubles as a lesson in professional judgement. The strongest warning was against speculation, especially Futures and Options (F&O) trading, where the vast majority of retail participants lose money, in line with regulators’ own findings. These instruments exist for institutions to hedge risk, not for individuals to gamble. Instead, the speakers pointed to disciplined, long-term wealth creation:

• Follow the principle of Safety, Liquidity, and Return when evaluating where to put money, in that order of priority.
• Start a Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) early to harness the power of compounding, since much of wealth is created in the final stretch of a long investment horizon.
• Focus on fundamentals, favouring sound companies and promising long-term sectors over short-term speculation.

One speaker summed up the mindset by quoting Warren Buffett’s two rules of investing: never lose your capital, and never forget the first rule. (This reflects the speakers’ perspectives shared at the session and is educational, not personalised financial advice.)

When a student asked whether traditional skills still matter in the age of tools like ChatGPT, the panel’s answer was clear and unified: AI is a powerful assistant, not a replacement. AI is excellent at gathering and organising data, but it cannot build conviction, form a relationship, or persuade a hesitant client, because trust is built by people. And you cannot use AI well without genuine product knowledge: you need to understand the underlying finance, metrics like EPS and the P/E ratio, to judge whether an AI’s output is actually a sound recommendation. The professionals who thrive will be those who pair human judgement with AI’s speed, a theme that echoes far beyond finance, as our guide to the limits of AI in research explores.

As the session was moving towards the end, Ms. Gupte talked about the financial frauds that are happening today. She reminded students that it is the duty of finance professionals to work as guardians of client trust in an era of rising digital fraud. She explained that it is necessary because scams are happening today; they exploit humans by instigating fear and greed.

There are digital arrest scams that impersonate officials, investment scams promising unrealistic returns, phishing attempts to steal OTPs and PINs, and money-mule schemes disguised as work-from-home jobs. She stressed staying aware, and it is the first step towards defence, yet there is no tool for saving someone from psychological manipulation; one thing that you can do is stay vigilant.

There was a collective message from all the leaders that a degree is just a starting point, not a finish line; there are ‘n’ opportunities beyond a degree. When one plans to build a career in finance, one has to bridge the gap between the theory learned in the classroom and the practical exposure gained through industry practice, which one can achieve through learning, courses, and certifications related to the finance field, real sales experience, knowledge of technical work and terms, along with communication skills built on ethical grounds and with discipline. Parul University works to provide students with the required knowledge through MBA and finance courses that give a roadmap to define your goals, build skills, earn certifications and never stop learning.

Also Read: Top Career Opportunities After MBA in Finance And Skils Required.