NHRDN Best B-schools 2015: Ranks 1-10
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
Rank: 1
Established: 1961
Top-scoring parameters: Faculty Profile, Academic Excellence, Student Profile
Differentiator: Pioneer of management education
One of the oldest IIMs to dot the Indian landscape, IIMA has steadfastly remained true to its reputation as the leading provider of management education in India. In fact, IIMA features in the Top 25 global rankings of B-Schools and is viewed as offering better career growth than even Harvard Business School. In 2008, IIMA became the first business school in the country to receive the EQUIS accreditation by the European Foundation for Management Development.
In January 2015, IIMA signed an MoU with the University of Melbourne for student and faculty exchange programs when Andrew Robb, Australian Minister for Trade and Investment, was visiting the B-school as part of his country’s delegation to the Vibrant Gujarat summit.It is the foremost pioneer of the case-study approach to management education in India.
This year, IIMA will be taking over from IIM Indore and conducting the Common Admission Test 2015 in October/November 2015 in partnership with CAT testing agency TCS. It is the first IIM that was instrumental in making the CAT exam computerized in 2009 with Prometric, the then testing agency.
As per the audited summer placements report released for the 2014-16 Post Graduate Program batch, finance has been losing sheen as the preferred functional area of expertise, while consulting and sales & marketing are seeing a rise. The share of finance in total number of summer internship offers has dropped from 28.38 per cent in 2011-12 to 15.88 per cent in 2014-15.
Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore
RANK:2
Established: 1973
Top-scoring parameters: Faculty Profile, Campus Life, Student Profile, Academic Excellence
Differentiator: Major research and innovation hub
Located in a sprawling campus in south Bangalore, India’s IT capital, the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) was set up with the sole purpose of catering to public sector enterprises. Students of IIMB have opportunities to do short projects with the startups as part of their course and gain experience before they graduate from the Institute.
As the government goes about setting up new IIMs, older institutions like IIMB are called upon to mentor the newer ones. Like it did for IIM Tiruchirapalli, IIMB will now mentor IIM Visakhapatnam.
In the last few years, IIMB’s thrust has been to become internationally recognized for excellence in teaching and research programs. IIMB is the only Indian school to belong to the Global Network of Advanced Management (GNAM). According to its website, IIMB has introduced a new competitive research grant of Rs 25 lakh for a duration of two to three years to support empirical research based on themes relevant to Indian business and management. The research grant is open for regular faculty members of the B-school.
IIMB has partnerships with over 112 top B-schools globally. This network also results in a large cohort of international students spending a term on the IIMB campus. Similarly, IIMB collaborates with Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which offers IIMB’s PGP students access to IISc’s courses in technology and innovation.
Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta
RANK: 3
Established: 1961
Top-scoring parameters: Academic Excellence, Accreditation & Linkages, Faculty Profile
Differentiator: One of the best B-schools for finance courses
The first of the IIMs to be established, IIM Calcutta is a fully autonomous institution established in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management, the government of West Bengal, the Ford Foundation and the Indian industry. This placement season saw the institute receiving over 350 offers on Day Zero, where Amazon was the top recruiter with 22 offers.
The only Indian business school that is a member of the Global Alliance in Management Education (CEMS), an elite club of 28 premier business schools from across the world, IIMC on February 2015 announced its foray into healthcare management education with its one-year Healthcare Executive Management Program (HEMP). Jointly organized by IIMC and Glocal Hospitals, HEMP combines healthcare management education with field-based learning across Singapore and India. In another initiative, this time in the field of Human Resources, IIMC has tied up with Hughes Global Education India to offer an Executive Program in HRM. This program offers working executives learning through lectures and real world case studies including addresses by senior executives from the corporate world.
IIMC is planning to start a full-time PGP in business analytics. The new course will replace the existing Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Aided Management (PGDCM) from the 2015 batch.
Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur
Rank: 4
Established: 1949
Top-scoring parameters: Academic Excellence, Student Profile, Placements, Alumni Strength
Differentiator: Foremost in HRM and IR
XLRI was established by Jesuit Fathers and was termed as “an oasis of self-discovery which changes lives and creates lifelong friendships” by alumnus and now former CEO of HCL Technologies and philanthropist Vineet Nayar. Because of its Jesuit origins, the school underlines the value of working for the greater good of the society and not just for economic gains. This, along with students majoring in Human Resources, is what sets apart this premier institute from the rest.
Unlike most B-schools in the country, XLRI has its own admission test called XAT, followed by GD and PI. After some students protested over XAT exam results, XLRI published the XAT 2015 answer sheet to prove the transparency of its test. The institute has more than 80 courses in various streams such as finance, human resources, marketing, strategy, systems and economics.
XLRI has restarted the part-time PGDM-BM program for working professionals. Essar Steel India Executive Vice Chairman Firdose Vandrevala, who is an alumnus of the evening program, had this to say: People who knew me were surprised when I followed a hard day’s work at the Tata Steel Plant with evening classes at XLRI for three straight years… I value most the respect I picked up there for (a) data-driven, fact-based, analytical decision-making, and (b) spotting the parallels in seemingly disparate situations.”
Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow
Rank: 5
Established: 1984
Top-scoring parameters: Academic Excellence, Student Profile, Placements, Alumni Strength
Differentiator: Focus on executive education in India
Located in the heritage city of Lucknow, IIML is the fourth of the illustrious IIMs. The institute, which was the first to set up a satellite campus for executive education, has been awaiting the sanction from the Ministry of Human Resource Development regarding the appointment of a permanent director.
Meanwhile, the seniormost professor of IIM Lucknow, Rajiv Kumar Srivastava, has been made the Interim Director at the institute. His appointment was made official on September 15, 2014. Prof Srivastava, an alumnus of Virginia Tech USA, NITIE Bombay and IIT Kanpur, has been associated with the institute for more than two decades and has held various academic and administrative positions including Chairperson Student Affairs, Chairperson Alumni Affairs, Chairperson PGP and Dean Academic Affairs.
For the graduating batch of 2015, IIML has achieved 100 per cent placement. About 144 recruiters made 463 job offers to the students. This number also included 163 lateral job offers from the higher entry placement process (HEPP) this year, 23 per cent more than the previous year. It is the highest ever at the campus. HEPP is offered to students who come with more than three years of prior experience to study at the B-school. Three of the institute’s programs have been accorded the AMBA accreditation. A core component of the one-year IPMX is an international module of four to five weeks at Faculty of Management, McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
Rank: 6
Established: 1973
Top-scoring parameters: Accreditation & Linkages, Academic Excellence, Student Profile
Differentiator: Known for its links with global B-schools
With a belief that education of people comes first, this autonomous institution boasts of providing students with the right kind of platform to become entrepreneurs who in turn give their due back to society through their ventures. The MDI alumni include Anurag Batra, Founder of exchange4media.com, Neeraj Biyani, Co-Founder at Hector Beverages and Pankaj Guglani, Founder and CEO at RedQuanta.
The school received the prestigious AMBA accreditation again in 2011 and also the SAQS accreditation until 2018.
In 2013, MDI introduced its International Summer University program that exposes students from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities to the management discipline and learn from faculty overseas.
It has signed MoUs with many state universities like Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science & Technology, Murthal; CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar; University of Kashmir, Srinagar; National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra; Saurashtra University, Rajkot; Malaviya National
Institute of Technology, Jaipur among others.
The institute prides itself on cultivating what it calls “change agents”. Many of the alumni have also made their mark through entrepreneurship. MDI started Unnati, India’s first ever student-run mutual fund in June 2001. What started with Rs 50,000 has now registered AUM of close to Rs 10 lakh.
Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode
Rank: 7
Established: 1997
Top-scoring parameters: Student Profile, Leadership & governance, Placements
Differentiator: Online learning program for executives
With a focus on ‘Globalizing Indian Thought’, IIMK has become one of the most sought after B-schools in the country. With placements in full swing, one of the students has bagged a whopping Rs 43-lakh offer from an international conglomerate. Unlike earlier years, the B-school decided to give its students a second chance for the dream company of their choice. While the idea came last year, it was only this year that it was implemented. While the students are allowed to choose their dream companies, they are eligible for open companies that are designated by the faculty placement committee.
In January 2015, the Kerala Cabinet cleared a proposal to set up a campus of IIMK in the state capital Thiruvananthapuram. Kerala government’s Finance Department cleared the proposal for granting the 4.5 acres near the proposed Knowledge City at Kazhakootam.
IIMK works closely with several government departments for research focusing on management and development ever since chief minister Oommen Chandy and his cabinet colleagues attended a full-day brainstorming session on management mantras at IIMK in 2011.
Incidentally IIMK was the first institute in Asia to offer a distance online learning program in management for working executives called Interactive Distance Learning. This was introduced in 2001-2002.
International Management Institute, Delhi
Rank: 8
Established: 1981
Top-scoring parameters: Academic Excellence, Accreditation & Linkages, Faculty Profile
Differentiator: Industry connect helps frame its pedagogy
With a vision to be a truly global school, it seeks to create and nurture globally-minded, industry ready, socially conscientious, ethical and value adding managers through its internationally accredited programs and its innovative transformation process.
There are myriad ways in which the institute differentiates itself. It admits the students to its post graduate programs only on the basis of merit in which the scores obtained in CAT and GMAT are taken into account. Equal emphasis is also paid to the possession and display of right attributes and attitudes as assessed through psychometric tests and the ability to comprehend, conceptualize and articulate insights and knowledge.
In IMI, industry connect helps select faculty, shape the course structure and pedagogy and groom industry decision makers. Induction program, corporate immersion program, summer internship program, teaching through cases and problem-solving exercise by a faculty that has a blend of academic researchers and industry practitioners, partnership with corporates for co-creation and co-delivery of courses, live projects, talks by business thought leaders and functional heads and skill building workshops constitute the portfolio of mechanisms through which the institute tries to chisel out industry-ready professionals.
Indian Institute of Management, Indore
Rank: 9
Established: 1996
Top-scoring parameters: Acade-mic Excellence, Student Profile, Placements
Differentiator: Experiential learning and social sensitivity
With an aim to be recognized as one of the top 3 management institutes of India, IIM Indore has expanded rapidly in scale and scope over the last few years. It has been a pioneer of sorts. Besides opening campuses in Dubai and Mumbai, which was a first, it also launched a five-year Integrated Program in Management (IPM) in 2011 and this has become a big draw at the institute. In November 2014, the institute received close to 12,000 applications for 120 seats. IPM admits students after Class XII or higher secondary or equivalent from various schools in India. Once the first batch will graduate in 2016, the institute will take a call on expansion.
In December 2014, IIMI decided to shut its Dubai operations due to regulatory issues with the government there. After suspending admissions of 2014-16 postgraduate program (PGP) batch at Dubai campus, IIM Indore has now cancelled admissions for 2015-17 batch. It was the only IIM to have a foreign campus so far.
In 2014, IIMI joined the league of three other IIMs in the country to allot points for gender diversity. The fourth IIM to do this after IIM Calcutta, Lucknow and Kozhikode, the institute hopes that this will increase the representation of women on campus.
Faculty recruitment is a major priority for the institute as it looks to build its own base rather than rely on visiting faculty. Plans to strengthen the placement office and build close links to major corporate recruiters are afoot.
Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies Mumbai
Rank: 10
Established: 1981
Top-scoring parameters: Academic Excellence, Student Profile, Placements, Alumni Strength
Differentiator: Keeping pedagogy more current and contemporary
NMIMS has well-developed international linkages with reputed universities, leading to international assignments for teaching, research & consultancy and faculty
Since its origin in 1981, the institute has undergone a massive transformation. From its temporary location at Bhaidas Auditorium, today it is a large, imposing university with seven specialized schools plus two off-campus operations with an intake of over 6,000 students and over 430 full-time faculty members. NMIMS has nine schools, two satellite operations and three off-campus centers.
NMIMS has well-developed international linkages with reputed universities, leading to international assignments for teaching, research & consultancy and faculty and students’ exchange programs.
In May 2013, NMIMS unearthed a massive admission fraud along with the Mumbai police. NMIMS observed that there was discrepancy between the photograph taken at the time of writing the NMIMS Management Aptitude Test and the photographs on the Personal Interview application form of a few students. On the receipt of the complaint, police found that at least 87 candidates used fraudulent methods to secure admission.