Mysuru: “Micro-finance has been greatly affected by the recent environment hazards. Agriculture and business in rural area has got disturbed, causing imbalance in the economics of micro-finance,” said Dr. D. Veerendra Heggade, Dharmadhikari of Sri Kshethra Dharmasthala and Chairman of SDM Educational Trust. 

He was speaking on the recent flood situation, after inaugurating the 8th International Conference on Corporate Finance and Financial Markets (CFFM), organised by Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management Development (SDM-IMD), at its premises here recently and said “however, our religious beliefs and life practices will help us to overcome the situation. This will help us to reconstruct life, home and economic condition.” 

“The gap between rural and urban areas has greatly reduced over 20 years. Apart from the basic facilities like food, water and road, we have progressed in health facilities too,” he said.

“The improvement in facility has made us to access information, opportunities and facilities available in the world. This has also had impact on education system. Indian institutes have challenges to match the international standards to attract students,” he added. 

The chief guest and keynote speaker Dr. Bhimaraya Metri, Director, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Trichy said, “India has seen great leap in industrial revolution during last 10 years. We have to move from manufacturing outfits of Industry 1.0 and 2.0 to Industry 4.0 and beyond. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has to drive the Indian industries and parallelly we have to prepare ourselves for 5.0 revolution.” 

Further, Dr. Metri opined that the development of new technology has been a primary driver of the movement to Industry 4.0. Some of the programmes first developed during the later stages of the 20th century lacked the technology needed to make their complete implementation possible. Now, Industry 4.0 can help these programmes reach their full potential.

Earlier, Dr. N.R. Parasuraman, Director, SDM-IMD, welcomed and shared the importance of the conference in the present context of Indian financial situation. Dr. M. Sriram, Conference Chair, presented the theme of the conference and gave an overview on the contemporary situation.  Faculty members, staff and students of SDM-IMD were present, according to a press release from Dr. M.V. Sunil, Media Officer.