The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) launched its first advanced flagship residential programme that will begin on January 7 and will continue till January 11. This first-of-its kind ICAI programme is titled — Advanced Flagship Program: Empowering Trusted Advisors - Unlocking the Potential of Family Enterprises (Residential). It will be led by Nupur Pavan Bang, director cum dean of ICAI Centre of Excellence, Hyderabad. ICAI is aiming to open a total of 11 Centre of Excellence around the country. Three of these have already been set up in Hyderabad, Jaipur and Kolkata. Eight of the other centres will be launched in the next three years in different parts of India such as Bengaluru, Sonipat (Haryana), Maharashtra and more. Curriculum, fees For the first time, the programme will be held for five days and will admit 50 candidates on the first-come-first-serve basis. Interested candidates can start applying through the ICAI website, and each application will be judged by ICAI experts to see if the candidate is eligible for the programme. On the basis of the review of this first batch, new batches will be announced later. The course will be a five-day programme which will feature several speakers who will focus on succession planning, governance, conflict resolution, and sustainable growth strategies. The registration fees of this programme is Rs 50,000 + 18 per cent GST. This fee will include accommodation in the residential block of Centre of Excellence, Hyderabad campus and food arrangements. Curriculum of this programme will use real-world case studies and hands-on stimulations and other group activities. Day 1 of the programme will focus on "understanding family businesses", which will be followed by the topic of "nurturing the next generation and succession planning" on day 2. The third day will focus on "building strong family governance", while the fourth day will focus on "resolving conflicts in family businesses". The final day of the programme (day 5) will focus on "growth, fundraising, and ownership structuring." The programme has been designed to equip CAs with the expertise needed to address the distinct challenges of family businesses, ICAI President, CA Ranjeet Kumar Agarwal stated. 'CA GPT' for ICAI students Termed as 'CA-GPT' ICAI has also started using artificial intelligence (AI) in their day-to-day proceedings, which is expected to help students as well as ICAI members. "We have used AI to ensure that all of the important data is available on the internet - be it study materials for students, question banks, books and other things for students, or even information about registered companies for ICAI members," he said. This software has been fed with complete ICAI data, relevant to the main queries. Once somebody puts in a question, the software will find data/answers from the ICAI supplied data, and search engines such as Google or other sources will not be involved in this. Keeping in mind the advancement of artificial intelligence, ICAI has also launched five-day courses on AI, and Agarwal claims 200 of these courses have already been held in 2024. He also stated that ICAI is on a mission to change the situation of CAs being job-seekers to CAs becoming job-givers. With this in mind, ICAI has also been awarding need and merit based scholarships. "In this year, we awarded scholarships to 13,146 students which totalled to around Rs 9.5 crore," Agarwal added. In addition to this, the tuition fee of students from the North East area and J&K is also relaxed by 75 per cent.
