SEBI PREPARATION STRATEGY

Introduction : ​Hello everyone, this is Naveen here. I was fortunate enough to clear SEBI Grade
A exam this year. So thought of sharing my strategy with you guys which may help you in
dealing with this exam in a better way next year. Please note down that i have listed down what
sources I referred to, what mistakes I tried to avoid and what worked for me etc. Since every
person here is different from others, so it may be quite possible that some of you may not find
everything useful, so I advise you not to follow everything blindly, just apply your reason and
see if some of it can prepare you better for this exam in any way.

Background​ : I did my graduation in 2013 from BITS Pilani in Computer Science. After
graduation I worked for CISCO and AMAZON for little over 2 years. Then I quit my job to
prepare for UPSC. After 3 failed attempts in UPSC(twice in mains in 2016, 2017 and prelims in
2018), I rightly decided that it was time to move on and look for alternatives. So I appeared for
NABARD, RBI & SEBI exams in 2018 and was fortunate enough to clear SEBI grade A exam
this year.

Contents of the write up :

1. Phase 1 strategy
2. Phase 2 strategy
3. Time management for phase 1 & phase 2
4. Interview preparation strategy
5. Google drive link of my hand written notes for Securities Market

Note​ : Please go through the detailed notification of the 2018 exam to understand exam pattern
and syllabus(​https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FygW5WIHT8vZJpIGuPP8VR8YZ5a43WR_​)
This will help you make much more sense of the write up.
 Phase 1

Marks :

Preparation Strategy :

1. English Language
2. Quantitative aptitude
3. Reasoning

Since i have graduation in Engineering, so these are my strong areas. So I didn’t need
any separate preparation for these sections. I just practiced few mocks freely available on
ixambee website(​https://www.ixambee.com/free-mock-test/sebi-grade-a​) and that was more
than sufficient. General advice is practice lots of questions as speed matters a lot in phase 1.
Also refer to the time management section where i have noted few points on how to manage
time during exam.

4. General awareness

This is a scoring section and you can easily get an advantage over others if you do it
properly. I relied on The Hindu newspaper reading and then monthly current affairs capsules of
the hindu freely available on bankersadda website(​https://www.bankersadda.com/p/mont.html​).
Apart from this I focused on solving and going through general awareness questions of free
mock tests available on ixambee website.
(​https://www.ixambee.com/free-mock-test/sebi-grade-a​)
 5. Securities market :

This was completely new portion for me and for most of the other aspirants as well. And
there were hardly any good resources available for this. So had to search lots of things. Most of
my time for phase 1 preparation was devoted to this section only.
In the end, these are the sources i banked my preparation on :
a) Securities market chapter from Ramesh Singh for basic concepts.
b) Youtube Video series made by sunny gulwe for concepts clarification. These
videos were really helpful. (​https://www.youtube.com/user/Sunnygulve/playlists​)
c) Other free youtube videos provided by other channels like Edutap, Ixambee etc
d) Capital market and securities law module pdf freely available on icsi website. But
refer this pdf selectively and as per syllabus as this is some 800 pages pdf.
(​https://www.icsi.edu/media/webmodules/publications/CapitalMarketandSecurites
Law.pdf​)
e) SEBI circulars from SEBI website for last 5-6 months.
f) Current affairs related to securities market.
g) Questions practice from various sources ( ixambee test series, many youtube
channels available for free like Edutap, anuj jindal etc)
 Phase 2
Marks :

Preparation Strategy :

1. English

There are 3 sections in English paper.

a) Essay writing
b) Precis writing
c) Comprehension

I didn’t prepare separately for this paper because i had enough practice of writing Essays during
my UPSC preparation. Rest of the sections can be managed easily.

Suggestions​ :
1. Make sure you practice typing few essays on computer and not just writing on
paper.
2. Strictly stick to the word limit. (Though +- 10% is ok)
3. Avoid silly mistakes like spelling mistakes, grammatical errors etc. They deduct
marks for these.
4. The word limit for essay is far too low. So be absolutely precise. You can’t afford
to have more than 2-3 lines of introduction and conclusions.
5. If you have slow typing speed, then try to improve it beforehand. Speed matters a
lot in this paper as you have to type the whole paper.
6. Scan through the entire paper in the last to find out any typo, spelling mistakes
and grammatical errors.
2. Securities Market :

Most of the syllabus was overlapping with the Phase 1 syllabus. So relied on notes prepared
during phase 1 and prepared any extra topic that was mentioned in the syllabus.

Suggestion :
There is often a confusion that since each question in phase 2 carry 2 marks, so they
won’t ask facts based questions in phase 2. But there is no truth to this assumption. There were
many questions which were purely fact based. So make sure you are fully prepared to handle
such questions like in phase 1.

3.​ ​ESI & FM :

This is the most vast paper of the whole examination process as it combines complete syllabus
for RBI Grade B mains examination syllabus except for the English paper. These are the
resources i referred to:

❖ Economics :
➢ Ramesh Singh for basic concepts clarity.
➢ Latest Economic Survey.
➢ Latest budget.
➢ Current Affairs

❖ Social Issues :
➢ There is no point of going into historical details of this part as the questions asked
are mostly current affairs and schemes related. So just take syllabus wise list of
topics and do a wikipedia search or internet search to know basic concepts and
major developments. Eg : Take example of poverty, just find out what is the
definition, what are the estimate numbers for India, what are the various
committees set up for poverty(Rangarajan Committee, Tendulkar Committee etc)
and their recommendations and estimated number of poors in India and finally
what are the poverty eliminations programs in India and any other recent
development.
➢ Most of the questions asked from this section are generally from Current Affairs
section and schemes related. So focus heavily on that rather than on historical
background.

❖ Finance :
➢ Refer Bharti V. Pathak selectively for conceptual clarity
➢ Refer Prasanna Chandra selectively for numbericals portion.
 ❖ Management :
➢ Can refer any standard book or topic wise internet search.
➢ The trick here is solve lots of questions to understand types of questions asked
and solve them accordingly.
➢ The questions asked in Management section are of very basic nature and most
of them can be solved just by applying your common sense except for few
questions which are based on theories of management.

General tips for Phase 1 & Phase 2:

1. Focus on portions which are you strengthens and try to maximize your attempts and thus
score in those areas. (eg : I focused on English, securities market and general
awareness in phase 1 & on securities market in phase 2).
2. On number of attempts : Well that depends on person to person.Some people have high
accuracy and they go for lessor no of attempts and vice versa. So you have to figure that
out for yourself. I have less accuracy so i remember attempting some 160-170 questions
in phase 1.
3. Focus on current affairs. For phase 1, you should be covering 3-4 months and for phase
2, you should be covering minimum 7-8 months of current affairs. But remember, for
phase 2 you have to focus on current affairs related to syllabus only. No need to focus
on sports, personality or awards type of news for phase 2 unless it is related to the
syllabus.
4. Do lot of mock tests. Trust me that is the single most important thing in any competitive
exam. Don’t worry about the syllabus, it never gets completed.
5. Due to competitive nature of the exam, luck will definitely play it’s part. Sometime it will
favour you and sometime it won’t and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Eg : In my first UPSC prelims(2016), i got 116 marks ( with cut off also being 116 that
year) but I missed RBI prelims this year by 0.25 marks(got 105.50 with cutoff being
105.75 marks) and NABARD prelims by 1.50 marks. So don’t get disheartened if you are
unable to clear some stage with little margin. Best thing to do will be to move on.
6. Refer below section for time management during the exam.
 Time management

Phase 1

1. As there are total 200 questions and 120 minutes (5 sections with 40 questions each) in
phase 1, so it’s difficult to attempt complete paper. So you have to choose what
questions you want to attempt and what questions you want to leave specially in Quant
and Reasoning section. Don’t get stuck on one question, if you are unable to solve it or
remember it, just move on as there will be plenty of easy questions ahead. Remember
each question carry equal marks. In Machiavelli’s words, “Be clever like fox”.
2. Since there is individual sectional cut off, Your aim should be to attempt at least 20
questions correctly in each section specially in Quantitative aptitude section and
reasoning section. I have seen people who have scored 10 marks more than overall cut
but failed to clear individual sectional cut off as they didn’t devote much time to quant or
reasoning section.
3. Make a sequence of sections you would attempt in the exams and approximate time you
want to devote to each section.
This is the sequence of various sections i followed while attempting the paper
a. General awareness ( 40 questions : Max 10 minutes)
b. Securities Market ( 40 questions : Max 10 minutes)
c. English ( 40 questions : 25-30 minutes)
d. Reasoning ( 40 questions : 30 minutes)
e. Quantitative Aptitude( 40 questions : 40 minutes)
4. Rest of the things you can figure out by attempting mock tests.

Phase 2

I think there is enough time in phase 2 exam. The only thing to be cautious about is English
section, which I have already covered in phase 2 strategy.
 INTERVIEW

Since i have scored very good marks in interview(12/15 with highest score being 13), I’ll try to
go into details for this section.
As SEBI was recruiting at this scale for the first time, so there was hardly any transcript
available of previous interviews. So this became one of the most dynamic and difficult part to
prepare as it was difficult to gauge what exactly to prepare. Well this is my interview transcript :

Profile :
B.tech in computer science from BITS Pilani
2 years work experience with Cisco and Amazon
3 attempts at UPSC(appeared for mains twice in first 2 attempts)

Panel : ​3 member panel( 2 Males + 1 Female )

Interview :
Date : 5th Feb, 2019
Venue : Delhi
Duration : 15-20 minutes.

Questions asked :
Q : Walk us through your profile.
Q : Why do you want to come to public sector? What is more challenging, Working in IT sector
or working in public sector ?
Q : So you have such good work experience(Cisco + Amazon) then why do you want to join
SEBI ?
Q : So what projects did you work on in Amazon?
Q : How your profile(computer science graduation + IT work experience) can help SEBI grow ?
Q : Give us one specific use case where technology can help expand securities market in rural
areas ?
Q : What is the recent controversy between e-commerce companies like flipkart and amazon?
Q : Do you know about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies? Are cryptocurrencies legal
in India ? How we can regulate cryptocurrencies & digital currencies ?
Q : What is the Aadhar controversy ? What is recent SC judgement over it ?
Q : What is data localisation ? Can international companies store data outside India? How we
can protect data privacy? What is justice Srikrishna Committee report on the same ?
So there are few areas you definitely need to cover:

1. Your profile​ : As at least 80% of questions asked were related to profile in some way or
the other. You need to be through with your profile, each and every keyword. Expect
questions which are in news and are related to your profile even remotely. Eg : I had
worked in Amazon, so they asked me about the FDI issue in e-commerce.
2. Questions related to securities market which are in news : Eg : IL&FS issue, HR Khan
panel, 10% LTCG tax etc
3. Other questions which are in news : Aadhar controversy, Data privacy, Cryptocurrencies,
Data localisation etc.

General tips :
1. Prepare your profile thoroughly.
2. Make a list of important topics which are currently in news and prepare them thoroughly.
(you can find the list of topics which I had prepared for myself in this link.
(​https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qINhFZy0KnVyQdoJqROhsrbrltl_7e-6​)
3. Read newspaper regularly especially of your interview day. Sometimes they ask random
questions like what are the topics on Editorial page in today’s newspaper or what is the
main headline today etc.
4. Don’t try to be oversmart if you don’t know answer to any question. Just accept that you
don’t know the answer and move forward. There were couple of questions during my
interview where i clearly said ki sorry sir/madam, i don’t know the answer.
5. Overall the panel was very cordial and cooperative. It was not at all a stress interview
and more like an informal 15-20 min chit chat. So stay calm and be yourself.Let them
have an insight of what you are as a person.
 Google Drive link for hand written for Securities Market

Well, i have made a drive folder, where i’ll be uploading all my hand written notes for
securities market. These notes should be able to cover 80 % syllabus of the securities
market.

Link :​ ​https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hQU72NLIJ9mjid_PdAduup16HfXcsRy3

Queries : ​I have tried to list down most of the things in detail, so please go through this
document carefully. Still if you have any other queries, you can send me a mail at
naveen.sebi2019@gmail.com
PS : I’ll try to answer most of the queries, but please understand that due to time
constraints and other commitments, I may not be able to reply some of the mails.

Caveats :
1. It will take some time to scan all the notes and to upload them. So have patience
and check the folder regularly. I am hopeful of finishing the complete upload by
end of this week.
2. There may be some errors or modifications in the notes, mostly in facts as they
keep on changing. So if you have some doubt then please do a google search.
3. Current affairs and SEBI circulars you’ll need to update on your own.