How do you see Management Education and Business Schools emerging in Delhi and NCR in the next 10 years?

There will be an IIM in Delhi/NCR Region. The focus will shift increasingly to executive PGDM and distance education with huge demand from emerging sectors.

A few b-schools in Mumbai have been aggressively entering domain-based management education (Retail, Capital Markets, Family Business, Pharma). What direction do you foresee the Delhi and NCR based management education community taking?

Most – not all – domain based MBA or PGDM degrees will have short shelf life in my view. At the level of postgraduate studies students need to have little broader focus. Sectoral focus can come through training after they join the program. As Jack Welch said, ‘Students learn about networking in b-schools and everything else on the job’.

According to you what makes IMI, Delhi different from other B-schools?

IMI is different from other B-schools in the following ways: (1) It is supported by over 60 corporates. (2) It began with post experience post-graduate management education with international focus and still continues its niche in this area. (3) Our Executive PGDM (formerly known as Postgraduate Program in International Program) has overseas participants. Our curriculum is international and faculty profile is international, with a mix of visitng faculty from overseas and over 40 per cent full time faculty having education and work experience in Western Europe and North America. (4) We are focused on quality not quantity. We have no plans to expand the numbers in our PGDM programs. (5) Increasingly our focus will be on executive education, training, consulting and research whereby the revenue from these activities subsidises the PGDM programs. (6) We would like to be reckoned over the next 3 to 5 years or so as a research based b-school for practicing managers.

IMI is a corporate sponsored B-school and is said to have a lot of support from the industry and politicians. Could you elaborate on the support that has been backing the institute?

We do not have political support. Our Chairman Mr RP Goenka is known for his enterprise. He was made Rajya Sabha member because of his contribution to industry and economy. While in India it is common for individual enterprises to start b-schools in their own name, IMI was the first to be established by a group of companies and business families without any company name or family name attached to it. In fact in late 1980s the IMI Board rejected a proposal for a significant contribution from a business house (over 20 million at that time) because they wanted the name attached to IMI either as a prefix or a suffix.

How is the Post Graduate Program in International Management (PGPIM), the first course started by IMI performing? What is the priority you place on this course after starting a very public and popular degree like the 2-year MBA?

Excellent. Over the past 23 years about 20 per cent of PGPIM students were international students. Another 30 per cent of Indian students are occupying positions in global market place outside India. Even among the Indian students who remained in India several of them have attained leadership positions. Most recently the fast growing GMR DIAL recruited our alumnus, Mr Shanta Raju as its CEO. Another alumnus, who has two PhDs – one before and one after joining IMI is holding a senior faculty position in a premier university. We have several alumni starting their own enterprises including from the Birla, Dalmia and Amalgamation group, to mention a few.

How is IMI’s infrastructure and faculty geared up to handle five post-graduate courses (PGP, PGPIM, PGPM, PGPHRM and Executive PGDM)?

We have adequate infrastructure to run the programs. Our regret is that we are unable to make all programs fully residential. We are centrally located. Our resource utilisation is optimal. Our faculty is among the best in the country and the transformation that takes place in the classroom has few parallels. I am sorry if I sound boastful, but this is true.

Are you looking at campus expansion? What is your strategy for adding faculty members in the next ten years?

We hope to have a separate campus for executive education. We have no immediate plans to expand PGDM programs. We will soon start a Fellow Program in keeping with our reserach goals and ambitions. We have doubled our faculty in the past two years and we will increase our faculty by another 25 pc in the next two years. The idea is to develop IMI into an integrated b-school focusing on all four pillars: teaching, training, research and consulting.

Which B-schools do you mostly lose your potential students to?

The IIMs, of course, because our cut off is 95 percentile and above.

Why did IMI choose to do away with the Group Discussion and instead include an Impromptu Speech as part of the admissions interview?

Research by our senior faculty led by Prof BR Sharma revealed that there is no correlation between CAT scores and academic performance in PGDM. We still use CAT – no other test – for our PGDM because it is an objective filter. We find the need to test written and oral communication skills. Because of cultural differences and differences among rural and urban candidates we find that extempore presentation on a subject will be a better method to find oral communication skill than group discussion. We also ask participants to write a one page essay. Then we use interview method.

What other changes in the admissions policy is IMI looking at?

We will gradually focus on having more people with work experience. From next year onwards, we will use the CAT only for screening. Once selected for the personal interview stage, a candidate’s CAT score will cease to have weightage. What will matter is the work experience, prior academic record and performance in the personal interview, essay and extempore. The interview, essay and extempore will hold 30 pc weightage.

Talking about the admission process at IMI, what top 5 qualities do you look for in probable students?

Integrity, hard work, team spirit, simplicity and humility in that order.

Can you share some information about the profile of students in terms of gender, previous education background and work experience in your newly admitted PGDM batch? Does IMI prefer any profiles of educational background and work experience to others?

About 74 pc are male and 26 pc are female in the new batch. 54 pc are engineering graduates, followed by 22 pc from BCom and 10 pc from Science streams. 54 pc have work experience. 34 pc have more than one of year work experience and 8 pc have more than 3 years of work experience.

Nearly half the PGP batch gets placed in New Delhi and NCR region. What are you doing to expand opportunities for future batches in terms of geography of placement?

Less than one third get placed in the NCR region. In fact in 2007 majority have gone to West and South, specially Bangalore and Mumbai. We believe in widening the net, both in admissions and in placements. We are increasing the client base. In the past two years our interaction with corporates has increased significantly because of our in-house training programs with large companies in both the private and the public sectors. This is having spin off benefit in recruitment. This year we had eight summer internships abroad. Some of these will result in overseas placement.

Could you elaborate on your association with IMD, Lausanne? How has the collaboration helped IMI?

We had collaboration with International Management Institute, Geneva which merged with IMEDE, Lausanne to form IMD, Lausanne. Till 1989 we used to get three faculty each from IMI Geneva and McGill University, Canada. Some of our faculty also used to visit and teach in McGill. Now the relationship with IMD is more at the emotional level than at the substantive level. We have frequent interactions and guidance from them. That is about it. We have now tie ups with over 10 b-schools in various parts of the world which are primarly focused on faculty and student exchange and credit transfers but none for joint diplomas or degrees. We do not have any tie ups which are not in sync with our Govenment policy. We respect and comply with the Government policy even if we do not necessarily agree with it.

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