'We will take a stake in student projects'

Q&A: Anwar Ali, Director, IMT Ghaziabad

Anwar Ali, currently serving as the Director of IMT Nagpur, will take charge of IMT Ghaziabad from April 1. Bidya S Sahay, the incumbent at IMT Gaziabad, has become the Director of MDI Gurgaon. Ali will be the Director at both IMT Ghaziabad and Nagpur till the latter finds a replacement. In a chat with Kirtika Suneja, he shares his plans to make the institute international. Edited excepts:

What are the challenges faced by IMT?
This year has been challenging for students because of the tough economic conditions but we are encouraging students to take up entrepreneursip and they too have shown interest. We are planning to start an incubation centre by 2010 for students interested in entrepreneurship. Students can come up with their business plans and attend courses conducted by successful entrepreneurs under the guidance of our internal faculty. Then we will invite venture capitalists to fund three or four of the projects. In fact, we will take a stake in student projects through equity participation.

How do you plan to take IMT international?
IMT is an established brand and we have foreign alliances too but we want to make it better globally. We are going for international accreditation wherein the institute will be certified by international accrediting agencies depending on our publications, faculty and course content. For this, we are in talks with US’ Association of MBAs (AMBA), Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and some European agencies and this certifaction should be in place in a year’s time.

What about your expansion plans here?
Our Hyderabad campus is still under construction and we will take the first batch in 2011 after a director and the faculty are in place. The student intake will be similar to that of IMT Ghaziabad and Nagpur, that have 360 and 300 students respectively. Also, some construction is happening in our 26- acre Nagpur campus that was built with an investment of about Rs 33 crore.

Are there any plans of adding more courses this year?
No but we are focussing on executive education and want more people with work experience to join our regular two year programmes. People with management capabilities and experience can relate with the classroom concepts in a better way.