Formerly known as the GITAM Institute of Foreign Trade, the vision of the School is to become the best in international business education, research and consultancy. GITAM University has been conferred the status of deemed university by the University Grants Commission in 2007, and the School has been brought within its ambit as an autonomous school of excellence in International Business.

The School’s current director is Dr V.K. Kumar. “We are here not merely to teach, but to research, organize executive education programs, seminars and conferences, and providing consultancy services to Industry. The School also has collaborations with three foreign B-Schools: Burgundy School of Business, Dijon, France; International University of Paris, Paris, France; Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.”

Talking about how the School supports the industry through pre-service education programs, Dr Kumar said, “Besides our flagship programme is MBA in International Relations, we have added two more programmes—MBA in Global Logistics Supply Chain Management and MBA in International Banking and Finance. It is our strategy to address the acute shortage of professionals in both the logistics and the financial services sector.” In addition to this, the School offers M.Phil and PhD programmes in international business. There is a trend among the executives to shift to academics as they attempt to go after intellectual pursuits. The M.Phil/Ph.D Programmes would help them in this regard.

The School also has a slew of executive education programmes, which are open-ended but not customized. But, according to Kumar, there are customized programmes as well, as some corporate want certain programmes to be designed according to their specific needs. The school is also engaged in some consultancy service programmes. For instance, the School provided consultancy service to MMTC, Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, and Naval Dockyard recently. In order to keep the interface with industry, the school organizes seminars and conferences, where business leaders from across the spectrum come to participate in the same. For example, a workshop on Special Economic Zones was recently organized.

The School has established a Business Analytics lab in collaboration with IBM in order to tap the growing need for Business Analytics skills. The School has also signed an MoU with Japanese company NTT Data, wherein they come and conduct classes for students in SAP in finance, marketing and HR modules. In the banking space, the School has tied up with HDFC Bank. The School makes it sure that students admitted would go out to the corporate world with an integrated, innovative, and global mindset. In addition to going through 116-credit courses that support the above mindset, students would have the opportunities to work on a Summer Internship Project (SIP) for about 8-10 weeks in Industry, go on International Study Tour (IST) for about 7-10 days, and interact with thought leaders from Industry, Government, and others.