Open Case File

Finance isn't a formula.
It's a room, a clock, and a decision.

Every simulation on LiFin Lab starts the same way real finance does — a specific moment, incomplete information, and people who disagree about what to do next. This is what was actually logged.

Case Log — Recent Entries 10 Active
7:10 AM A $18.4M AI platform, claimed 340% ROI, and a Board meeting in three hours. Budget Day — Project Helix Boardroom
2:14 AM A core banking cutover fails. ATMs, UPI, and POS go dark across four zones. Zero Hour — The Vaibhav Bank Outage Crisis Room
Day 0 Every function is in the room. Nobody agrees on what went wrong — or what happens next. The Last Board Meeting Reckoning
The Simulations

Five rooms. Five clocks. You're in the seat.

Full-length roleplay simulations — real roles, real numbers, a live decision that doesn't have a clean answer. Built for MBA and executive finance cohorts.

CASE / 01
7:10 AM, Board Day

Budget Day: The Project Helix Business Case

A $18.4M AI platform pitched at 340% ROI. Your own reality check on the numbers tells a very different story. The Board convenes at 10:00 AM — you have to decide what to say.

7Roles
$18.4MAt Stake
CFO/CTOLens
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CASE / 02
2:14 AM, Saturday

Zero Hour: The Vaibhav Bank Outage

A weekend cloud cutover goes wrong. Your infrastructure vendor's failover doesn't activate. Six hours later, digital payments are still down across four zones — and the clock is still running.

4C-Suite Roles
6 hrsDown
LiveTimer
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CASE / 03
The Reckoning

The Last Board Meeting

An airline is in crisis. Every function — Finance, Marketing, Operations — is in the room, and nobody agrees on what went wrong, let alone what to do next. Based on a real HBS-style case.

5Functions
1Meeting
HBPStyle Case
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CASE / 04
Four Quarters In

The Algorithm's Blind Spot

A bank's Gen-AI credit engine has been running clean for four quarters — every dashboard green — until one rejected applicant goes public. A governance and AI-fairness crisis simulation for bank executives.

AIGovernance
LiveMedia Crisis
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CASE / 05
Five Days

The Branch That Had a Bad Week

Five incidents, five days. Every single one, on its own, was survivable. A branch-level operational risk simulation — how small failures compound into a real one.

5Incidents
Op RiskLens
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CASE / 06
Five Years

CFO Journey

Five years, five defining decisions — Capital Budgeting, Capital Structure, Working Capital, Dividend Policy, Raising Capital. Every corporate finance topic you've learned, now in one seat. Scored against a textbook-optimal CFO.

5Decisions
FullCF Curriculum
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Learning Labs

The instruments, on their own.

Before the roleplay, the mechanics. Interactive calculators, worked examples, and quiz banks for every core corporate finance topic — build the muscle memory the simulations then put to the test.

Financial Derivatives

The trading floor, and the math underneath it.

A full MBA Financial Derivatives track — starting with a live Class 1 negotiation roleplay, then a multi-round trading game and a corporate treasury capstone, the Learning Labs, a free-form strategy builder, and three tools that build the pricing intuition from first principles.

CLASS 1
15 Min Negotiation, Live Reveal

🍊 The Orange Contract

The first class of the course. Three roles — a farmer hedging a price fall, an FMCG buyer hedging a price rise, and a dealer brokering both — negotiate a forward contract live in the room. Record the deal, reveal what actually happened three months later, and watch the payoff diagrams write themselves.

3Roles
LivePayoff Reveal
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CASE / 07
20 Rounds, Live Market

Dalal Street Derivatives

A 20-round Nifty trading simulation — futures, options, real transaction costs and bid-ask spreads, margin calls with a genuine grace period, and scripted market shocks. Build a position, defend it, or get liquidated.

20Rounds
6Instruments
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CASE / 08
8 Quarters, 4 Exposures

Meridian Treasury

You're the new Treasurer of an auto-parts exporter with real FX, interest rate, commodity, and equity risk. Hedge it with the full toolkit — or don't — and get scored on genuine risk reduction, not just P&L.

4Exposures
DualScoring
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CASE / 09
10 Rounds, Live News

The News Desk

Ten rounds, ten headlines, six real Indian stocks. Choose your instrument — spot, futures, or options — and trade your read of the news. Finish against a rule-based algo and a passive benchmark, plus a behavioural profile of how you actually traded.

10Rounds
3Instruments
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CASE / 09B
10 Rounds, Real Margin Rules

The News Desk: Margin Call

Same ten headlines, same six stocks — but the engine underneath now runs on real market mechanics. Risk-based margin, bid-ask spreads, live transaction costs, the ability to WRITE options as well as buy them, and genuine margin calls with a one-round grace period before forced liquidation.

10Rounds
MarginCalls Live
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CASE / 10
75 Minutes, Live Clock

The Hidden Book

4:45 PM, Friday. The bank just called about a position nobody approved. Kaveri AgroExports' hedge book is nearly three times its confirmed exposure, and half of it isn't hedging anything. Seventy-five minutes before forced liquidation — contain the crisis.

75Minutes
4Roles
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Derivatives Labs & Tools

Every instrument, then the pricing theory behind it.

Finance for Entrepreneurs

The numbers behind the pitch deck.

For founders and the classes that train them — every number a VC will actually scrutinize, then a live roleplay where six genuinely different business models compete for one fixed fund.

CASE / 09
6 Startups, One Term Sheet

Pitch Panel

Four founding teams — MSME lending, student transactions, crowdfunding, EdTech simulation — plus two non-tech businesses (a D2C snacks brand, a QSR chain), each with genuinely different unit economics. One Investment Committee allocates a fixed fund across all six.

6Roles
₹15 CrFund to Allocate
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Entrepreneurship Labs

Build your own pitch deck numbers, live.

Finance for HR

The equity conversation, from the HR side of the table.

For HR professionals and the MBA HR classes that train them — the vesting math, the tax bite, the dilution mechanics, and the decisions that shape what an employee's equity is actually worth years later.

CASE / 10
One Employee, Six Years, Five Decisions

Priya's ESOP Journey

You're the HR manager. From offer letter to exit, five real decisions — the cliff, the pool refresh, the repricing call, the exercise support — compound into what Priya actually walks away with. Every choice is a genuine trade-off, not a quiz answer.

5Decisions
6Chapters
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HR Finance Labs

The mechanics behind every equity conversation.

Executive Development

For bank executives, not just MBA students.

Built for a Scale IV Executive Development Programme — same "you're in the room" format, aimed at the risk and governance calls a bank's own leadership actually has to make.

About LiFin Lab

Finance the way it's actually decided — not the way it's usually taught.

Most finance education runs on slides and formulas: correct, but bloodless. A framework doesn't tell you what it feels like to be the CFO at 7:10 AM with a board meeting in three hours, or the person on a 2 AM call deciding whether to tell customers their money is safe.

LiFin Lab exists to close that gap — pairing rigorous, worked-through Learning Labs that build the underlying mechanics, with full roleplay simulations that put that mechanics under real pressure: incomplete information, disagreement in the room, and a clock that doesn't stop.

34 Interactive experiences — labs, simulations, and executive cases
2 Audiences — full-time MBA cohorts and practising bank executives
1 Underlying idea — every real financial decision is a room, a clock, and a call