Manipal starts corporate varsity course for BoB

The Manipal Education and Bank of Baroda (BoB) on Tuesday announced the launch of the Baroda Manipal School of Banking (BMSB) which was inaugurated in Bangalore on Monday.

The funded programme has BoB funding the programme through soft student loans while offering employment after finishing the post-graduate programme. Manipal had invested Rs 30 crore on its campus in Bangalore and part of that infrastructure will be provided for BoB.

Come December, and the group will launch another such dedicated programme, for another bank. In 2008, the group had launched a dedicated programme for ICICI Bank.

As a corporate university set up, the BMSB is expected to meet some of the need for quality training of prospective employees at the Bank of Baroda (BoB) before being absorbed as probationary officers in the bank.

The chief objective of the industry-academia partnership is to help create an employable workforce with ‘first-hour-first-day’ productivity.

BoB plans to start 500 new branches in FY12 and the bank on Tuesday has an intake of 2,100 probationary officers of which 1,500 are through direct recruitment, 250 are from agricultural colleges and rest through campus hiring.

Some 300 of these officers are placed in 85 of the overseas branches. BoB now has renewed its thrust on the cards business and on third-party products.