Industry leaders and captains from the National HRD Network tell People Matters why employers and aspirants should take this B-school ranking seriously and how it will become a game changer

Why is this ranking needed?

“In the absence of any consistent ranking system with high credibility, we received feedback from B-school aspirants who were unable to take an informed decision and were often misled. Organisations themselves were not able to choose the B-school most suited to their requirement, because the data wasn’t comprehensive enough. Lastly, it made complete sense for NHRDN with over 12,500 HR practitioners as full time members who play a major role in recognising, discovering and nurturing talent, to undertake this exercise and provide a benchmark ranking which all stake-holders can look up to and trust.”
S.Y. Siddiqui, National President, NHRDN and COO-Administration (HR, Finance, IT, Company Law & Legal), Maruti Suzuki India

“This is the first ranking being done by the users themselves. They being the key customers it is important for them to ensure that the process is authentic, legitimate, reliable, accurate and relevant to business requirements.”
Dr Santrupt Misra, Past National President, NHRDN, Director Global HR & CEO, Carbon Black Business, Aditya Birla Group

“There are many players in the space of management education, however, there isn’t any focus on quality. NHRDN is acting as a facilitator to get back this focus on quality and to make the process of grading B-schools more stringent, robust and objective. NHRDN initiated this ranking because others are to some extent based on perception. The purpose of doing the ranking is to do it more professionally, with more transparency and in an objective manner to help all the key stake holders, namely the educational institutions, students, employers and community at large. The idea is to get a win-win for everyone.”
P. Dwarakanath, Past National President, NHRDN & Director Group Human Capital, Max India

How was it done?

“The biggest differentiating factor is the rigorous process involved in the ranking. The jury and advisory committee had representation from industry and academia, and the data received from B-schools was validated by the research agency in collaboration with a member from NHRDN. The committee constituted a set of criteria which included parameters such as academic excellence, infrastructure excellence, corporate governance of the institute, performance of the alumni, industry-academy interface etc. The validated data became the basis on which we ranked the institutes.”
Dr Arvind Agrawal, Past National President, NHRDN and President, Corporate Development & Human Resources, RPG

What makes it different?

“Any information in the public domain should be backed by people who know the subject. NHRDN being an association of HR professionals, has the required expertise to create a credible B-school ranking and set a benchmark of how educational institutes should be ranked in the future. Most of the rankings done in the past have been done on the back of people who are reporters going and making that assessment. This is one where we have a panel with people from the industry and academia to make judgment calls on the evaluation.”
S.V. Nathan, Regional President-South, NHRDN

“This is the first ever ranking process which has every data point validated and comes across as a unique study wherein we have also focused on function-wise ranking for various colleges. There was a felt need among all the stake-holders for a reliable, professional study to be conducted by an organization, which has got no vested interests. This is why we decided to take this up as a social cause.”
Kamal Singh, Director General, NHRDN

Who benefits from it?

“I am personally not a great believer in ranking because decision by students to join an institute is not decided by the ranking alone but by availability of admission. Similarly, organisations do not necessarily rely upon ranking alone for hiring decision. However, ranking does help in spurting an educational institution to set higher benchmarks – in which case it does serve a worthwhile purpose.”
Dr Aquil Busrai, Past National President NHRDN and CEO, Aquil Busrai Consulting

“Even though B-school rankings in India are carried out by various agencies/ publications/ magazines, the feedback received so far from various quarters suggest that the process can be improved to reflect the true spirit of Rating and Accreditation, thereby bring quality, credibility and transparency to this important initiative.”
S. Varadarajan, Regional President-North, NHRDN & Executive President-HR, Tata Teleservices

The road ahead

“We wanted to do something beyond the rankings, as in improving the whole quality of education and contribute towards the community at large. Based on the gaps identified in the ranking process NHRDN will create modules where we could work with various B-schools to either deliver those modules in their schools or to create tie-ups between the B-schools or with industry.”
Rajeev Dubey, Regional President – West NHRDN and President (HR, After-Market & Corporate Services) & Member of Group Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra

“Our prime objective is to contribute to the society, to mentor B Schools to attain next level of excellence and help them build an industry ready talent pipeline.”
Sourav Daspatnaik, Regional President-East, NHRDN & CEO, Bengal Shipyard