A club, bridging between students and corporates

A university club helps students to enhance their understanding of real-life operations, provides cognisance and motivates to appreciate diversity around them. Voice of Business is one of them. Voice of Business, a business club of the Faculty of Business Studies (FBS) in University of Dhaka, has been working for the students of the faculty since its inception in 2007.

 Each year the club publishes business magazine with great enthusiasm together with outstanding attraction. Since its very first issue, VoB has been delivering captious acumen to the world. Following the legacy, VoB has unveiled its 10th issue this year.

Voice of Business has arranged its signature event "VoB Week 2019". This event denotes the unveiling of the 10th issue of VoB magazine and consists of insightful sessions, a startup fair and many more amazing segments.

Shibli Rubayat-Ul-Islam, dean of the Faculty of Business Studies, is chief patron of VoB. On  November 18, 2019, this event took place at Professor Habibullah Conference Hall at Faculty of Business Studies. Director of Brands and Communication of Banglalink Kazi Urfi Ahmed was the chief guest of this event. The event started with the speech of Md Mishkat Ul Kabir, chief editor of Voice of Business. In his inaugural speech, he said, "Upholding the tradition and custom set by alumnae, Voice of Business is proud to present the 10th issue of Voice of Business: first ever business magazine written and published by the students of FBS, DU. This endeavour will be celebrated through a grand programme comprising the remarkable unveiling ceremony and several other sessions targeted towards the skill development and knowledge enhancement of students".

Famous youth personality and Assistant Editor of Unmad Morshed Mishu was there as special guest. Md Nazmul Hasan, assistant professor of Banking and Insurance Department, is VoB's advisor and he was also present in the event and delivered speech. The event ended with the speech of VoB's president Md Azmain Adil. On November 19, 2019, a cover story session was held at the conference hall. A second year student of University of Dhaka said, "VoB Week has given us a great opportunity to learn from the experts through the insightful seminars and also the startup fair generated excitement in students as well".

A two-day start up fair was also arranged in FBS premises on October 03 and 04. Well known local startups like Aesthetes, Kahon, Sparkling ladies and the Munch Station exhibited their business operations.

For the magazine, VoB has always taken interviews of many iconic and luminary business figures. This year's issue also contains interviews of some young experts like Taslim Ahmed, CEO of Unitrend LTD; Maliha M Quadir, founding managing director, Shohoz; Morshed Mishu, assistant editor of Unmad; KM Saqiful Alam, commonwealth scholar, National University of Singapore and Asif Al Hye, head of analytics, Intelligent Machines Limited.

In the previous magazines, VoB interviewed Nobel Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus and renowned economist Dr Debapriya Bhattachariya who shared their philosophy with its readers. VoB considers itself lucky to be a medium through which students can always get an insight from such well accomplished persons.

Voice of Business arranges different inter and national level competitions every year. "BRANDrill" is a national competition arranged by VoB. It is the first ever national competition of FBS, University of Dhaka. BRANDrill helps students to learn branding in a more practical manner. The immense responses from the students to this competition show that students are willing to think out of the box and practice branding if they are allowed to do so in a fun way. As the market is a global battlefield and the weapon is branding, this competition provides a way to the students to flourish as a brand manager.

This year VoB launched a new inter university competition called "Biznnovation". Biznnovation mainly invites business ideas that are environment friendly and causes no harm to the environment. Students of University of Dhaka participated in this competition and came up with some amazing environment friendly business ideas. VoB has also arranged "Internship Fair 2019" in which different companies like Banglalink, Hotel Waves, CRAB, EON Group, ARLA offered internship to the fourth year students and collected their CVs.

Voice of Business has always worked to act as a spokesperson of the students of the faculty and to bridge the gap in between the corporate world and students. It hopes to continue its operation more vigilantly in future. The fact that students now can keep pace with the evolution of business thinking and integrate themselves with new concepts; Voice of Business considers this as its biggest achievement. It focuses on youth development and is always in search for ways which will help the students face the upcoming challenges in their future and be competitive of them all.

The writer is an executive of Voice of Business and a student of Faculty of Business Studies, University of Dhaka. She can be reached at [email protected]