'We will increase the number of sponsored research students'

Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM) at IIT-Kharagpur was established in 1993, and was the first management school to be set up within the IIT system. It was initiated by a distinguished alumnus and a Life Time Fellow of the Institute, Vinod Gupta, whose endowment was matched by support from the Government of India. In an interview with Pradipta Mukherjee, the institute’s dean, S Srinivasan, says its focus for the current academic year would be research. Edited excerpts:

What are your plans for the academic year?
We are setting up a small and medium enterprises (SMEs) clinic for surveying problems and solutions in the region. This will be a centre within VGSOM. Both faculty and students will go on field visits and find technological solutions to any production or financial problems of the SMEs. The institute will invest Rs 2 lakh for initial visits to SMEs in the region.

But after a while, the SMEs will be charged a consultancy fee so that the venture becomes self-sustaining. We are also going to launch a dual-degree programme in financial engineering and entrepreneurship. The first batch will have 20 students and eligible BTech graduates will have to study for five years for an MTech or MBA degree.

The students can choose dual degree in entrepreneurship engineering or financial engineering, for either MTech or MBA degree. The course will be divided into 10 semesters and the fee would be around Rs 25,000 per semester.

Any plans to encourage research?
We will increase the number of sponsored research students. Currently we have five full-time research students and around 15-20 sponsored research students. We intend to launch combined MBA and PhD research programmes for higher research grants. Currently, students get research grant of around Rs 10,000 per month.

We intend to depute around two young faculty members every year to the IIMs so that they can learn marketing and strategic management tools. At VGSOM, our core strength is in production but not so much in marketing, so the decision to sponsor faculty at IIMs. Most probably, we will send our faculties to IIM-Ahmedabad.

How much funds does the institute require on an average per year?
Last year we generated Rs 248 lakh of which we have been able to save Rs 35 lakh while the remaining was used by the institute, in maintenance and other expenditures.