IIMs plan to join hands for overseas effort

Updated on: Thursday, October 22, 2009

Bangalore: Pankaj Chandra, director of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B), says it's time now to take on the INSEAD and IMDs of the world.

Samir Barua Samir Barua, his counterpart at IIM Ahmedabad, talks about the need for IIMs to go abroad as a common brand rather than individual institutions.

Just days after the human resource development ministryâ€™s in-principle approval for IIMs to set up campuses abroad, India's premier B-schools have already started walking the talk.

Barua says the IIMs could explore the possibility of two or three institutes collaborating to set up a new campus abroad. 'Of course, this would raise the question of the identity of the campus. We will take the discussions to our board of governors and faculty and think of how we could do it,' he says.

Some directors think pooling their resources â€” financial and faculty â€” for their international foray makes eminent sense. 'The faculty resources at IIMs are not identical. Some IIMs have more shortage in some areas and excess in some areas and vice versa. Two institutes deciding to work together can use this as an advantage, as the load will even out,' says Barua.

Chandra on his part stresses the importance of 'keeping the brand and its value in mind' before taking the proposal forward. He believes IIM-B is already an international B-school, owing to its various international academic linkages with some 90 management institutes around the world, including London Business School.

Pointing out that itâ€™s too early to talk about specific initiatives, the IIM-B director says the institutes will study which market they plan to be in, its size, the advantages, and what programme to offer, etc. It will take around six months to decide on these issues.

The first among the IIMs to think of an international footprint, around four years ago, IIM-B came up with the idea of a campus in Singapore, which was turned down by the then HRD minister Arjun Singh who felt there was a need to meet domestic demand first.

Along with an international presence, the IIMs say they want to have a mix of international students and their international linkages will help them achieve this.

'â€œThere is no point going abroad if we want Indian students. We get the best of them anyway. We need to look at an international pool of students, a class with a healthy mix of students from different parts of the world,' says Chandra.

IIMs are still discussing the details. While Barua thinks the one-year executive management programme could be do-able, Chandra says he would love the Common Admission Test (CAT) â€” a prerequisite for MBA aspirants in India â€” to be a global examination

IIMs plan to join hands for overseas effort

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