Indian School Of Business Kicks Off

The Indian School of Business (ISB), a world-class management institute established by India's top business houses, became operational today with the formal induction of the first batch of students who will undergo a 12-month post-graduate management course.

Appropriately, the captains of the Indian industry, apart from faculty members drawn from major business schools of the world, were present at the function.

Those who were at the function included Anand Mahindra, Y C Deveshwar, Rajesh Pawar, Analjeet Singh, Srini Raju and Anil Kumar. Don Jacobs, who is retiring as the Dean of Kellogs School of Business and incoming dean and Deepak Jain.

Pramath Sinha, the ISB chief executive, has been appointed as the full-time dean of the school by the board members who met here today morning. He will take a leave of absence from McKinsey & Company, Delhi office, where he is a partner.

Inaugurating the first post-graduate programme in management, Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu said the state government, which is working with the Harvard University for its executive and bureaucratic training needs, will henceforth avail the services of ISB.

By encouraging such institutions, Hyderabad is being promoted as a knowledge hub and also as transit hub between Europe and China, Naidu added.

Earlier, addressing a press conference, Sumantra Ghoshal, founding dean of ISB and a faculty of London School of Business, said the school will launch its executive development programmes (EDP) in November.

In all, it plans to organise four EDPs -- human resource strategies in transforming organisations, programmes on marketing, strategic leadership and corporate renewal and digital strategies.

Rajat Gupta, managing director of McKinsey Worldwide, and chairman of the governing board of ISB, said the quality of students applying for the programme is at par with any of the international business schools with 60 per cent of them having work experience.

The first batch of the post-graduate programme of ISB consists of 130 students who have scored an average of 690 in the GMAT exam and have an average work experience of four-and-half years.