Have you noticed that since our childhoods we are raised in a really fast paced life which continually promotes competition, achieving our goals faster and faster and is somehow just not enough when it’s to do with being financially successful these days just earning a good salary. We all have the capability of forming coherent goals, making smart decisions, understanding threats and mitigating risks, and shifting our objectives when needed. But there can be times when such abilities can not just be taught at regular schools.
Developed by Gaurav Bhagat Academy (GBA), The Lakshya Game aims at filling this gap with the help of experience-based learning. Instead of traditional means of learning, the Lakshya Game allows the players to experiment with their financial acumen in a simulation. Lakshya is a Sanskrit word for goal, and GBA endeavors to teach its participants through gaming: setting meaningful goals, strategising, smart decisions, risk taking, and adaptive responses leads to success!
What is the Gaurav Bhagat Academy Lakshya Game?
The GBA Lakshya Game is a unique and engaging board game designed to guide users through the principles of financial literacy, entrepreneurialism, wealth generation and aspirational planning. However, this game is unlike typical board games because the objective is not just to acquire wealth or win against other players but to achieve a clearly set goal based on strategic choices. Every participant is allocated a different personal financial position as is the case with people in real life as each person has varying amounts of: Income, expenditures, expenses, debts, liabilities and possessions.
What was the Purpose behind Developing the GBA Lakshya Game?
In an attempt to translate Financial Literacy more effectively and make it interactive, we created the experiential GBA Lakshya game. Our vision was to put finance into practice and enable the participant to go beyond memorisation and actually use learning related to income, expenses, savings, investment, business opportunities, insurance, debt and emergency situations. Experiential game play thus creates a bridge between financial literacy, financial planning and goal management and smart decision making.
Our financial game in addition enhances skills on wealth accumulation, positive cash flow management, risk mitigation and creative solution generation skills.
Before You play the Game Know Your Lakshya
At the start of each game, each player defines a “goal” or “Lakshya”. A Lakshya is your desired financial condition after playing 150 financial years. It can be Financial Freedom, Successful business, Passive income streams or Financial wealth.
Knowing your Lakshya gives meaning to your decisions about money and enables you to plan strategies to reach it by asking yourself “Will this strategy move me closer to my Lakshya?” or “Will this make it harder for me to reach my Lakshya?”. Your real life is just the same, once you set up clearly defined Lakshya for yourself, then you will be able to better judge opportunities and spend money and time more wisely towards it.
How to Play the GBA Lakshya Game (in 3 steps):
- Identify Your Starting Cash Flow Position
Every player has a unique starting Financial profile with income, Expenses, Cashflow, Asset, Liability etc in their Hand at start of the game which will help the player to set a plan of action for success and makes the foundation of planning financial success throughout game play.
- Set Your Lakshya
A worthwhile goal helps define the reason for playing the Lakshya game. Setting an ambitious but realistic financial goal prior to starting enables the players to understand the purpose behind each strategic move they will make during the simulation. Goals may be set to be, achieve Financial Independence, wealth Building, Business Growth or setting multiple streams of Income.
- Manage Your Income & Expenses
During the Lakshya Game; Each player may earn from Salary, Business, Investments and Other avenues like Passive Income sources and will spend for lifestyle or invest, players’ decision for this will result in moneyflow. This introduces a great money concept – that “making money is just one portion of success. Flow money” will become equal to making money; the other dimension of financial management.
- Invest and Build Your Business
As the player’s Journey to Financial Freedom unfolds, players will also make decisions about investing in some of their favorite things, starting some business, getting more education or learning skills to further their career path. They get more or less money on a Monthly Salary based on the investment done and education gained earlier.
- Brace Yourself For The Unknown
In a realistic scenario you can be the master of your destiny, but with surprises happening you need to be agile and take action. Players encounter unplanned events such as Market up turns, economic crisis, family issues, business breaks, even opportunities, illnesses, promotions at work which forces them to alter their course. This phase enhances their understanding about change management, risks, and managing opportunities.
- Chart Your Journey to Your “Lakshya”
A conscious effort to chart out journeys will make participants of this board game realize that their Financial Journey has milestones and to reach the end “Lakshya “one will need conscious effort to take one step at a time while evaluating the current impact on financial status.
- Review and Learn from Your Choices
This simulation takes you through a process of trial and learning. You have your fair share of luck (bad and good) but there is room for learning and making a better choice in the future by analysing one’s successful and unfavorable choices made throughout the board game.
GBA Lakshya Game’s Lessons on financial education
Learning on wealth creation from the game. The greatest part of the Lakshya Game is the understanding of differentiating earning money and creating wealth, players can realise that even from their game they can understand how living on one single income only is going to give you limited returns and the more you reinvest or build various incomes, you grow. Game’s emphasis on other concepts like assets, liability, re-investment and cash-flow Management and making wise risks.
Game development of Business and decision making skills
While financial knowledge has been the fundamental knowledge base on which GBA Lakshya game works upon, this game will surely help in building other business attributes like, creative thinking, logic processing, strategic planning, negotiation, communication and of course, decision making skills. The players will have the flexibility to plan new business models, analyse financial strategies, implement business risks in various methods as an entrepreneur and will help in realising how a financial decision impacts the future in the capacity of a professional. The game provides an opportunity to make tricky business decisions and take risks without any repercussions as happens in real life situations.
Who Can Play the GBA Lakshya Game?
The game covers a variety of professionals and age groups. students use the game to identify money issues prior to getting down to employment; while young job professionals will discover money related skills or investment opportunities. For aspiring entrepreneurs this game will help take a trip on a safe, fun trip to discover a business plan. For career professionals it offers a chance to build value as well as have economic planification skills from practice.
How GBA Lakshya promotes personal development
The GBA Lakshya Game teaches players skills and habits that are useful for development in life. These include holistic and strategic thinking before taking action, risk management, resources management and goal focus. The game facilitates and promotes learning of communication, negotiation and problem solving skills through experience, learning of long-term thinking by experiencing situations from either success or failure in short-term.
These lessons from mistakes and successes in a virtual world can help students, professionals and entrepreneurs to factor decisions involving personal finance, business decisions and life goals more effectively and confidently.
Summary
The GBA Lakshya isn’t merely a board game, but an exercise that imparts first-hand experience of financial decision-making amongst learners. Through the incorporation of goal-setting, financial planning, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and strategic thinking, it emphasizes the significance of logical decision-making, disciplined execution, and adjusting strategy accordingly. Financial education via the learning process participants can explore the fundamentals of acquiring a treasure trove whilst at the same time enriching entrepreneur and personal life skills.
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