IIM Lucknow to support manufacturing startups

The newly appointed IIM-L Director Ajit Prasad said he completely supports the Make in India initiative

In the backdrop of India emerging as a global hotspot for digital startups, Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L) is keen to supporting students to launch manufacturing enterprises.

"Our endeavour would be to encourage students and the local community (Lucknow and Uttar Pradesh) in hardcore manufacturing startups apart from digital startups, which is indeed in vogue these days," newly appointed IIM-L Director Ajit Prasad told media in his maiden press interaction.

Echoing the theme of 'Make in India', he stressed both kinds of startups were needed in the country's economy for creating jobs, and in fact they complimented each other.

He lamented that earlier Kanpur and Lucknow used to be prominent manufacturing hubs, but over the years their status had declined. He said the institute would make invest time and money in helping revive the local industries.

Replying to a Business Standard query, Prasad said he was not a big fan of big campuses and the experience of other Indian business schools had not been good as well. "We would focus on our core campus, although we have a campus in Noida. Of course, we would be firming up alliances with other universities and institutions for academic and research purposes," he underlined.

On proposed foreign campuses of B-schools, Prasad maintained that Indian B-schools were meant for Indian students, yet for the sake of diversity he would welcome foreign students to study here.

Laying out his priorities, Prasad, who is an alumnus of London School of Economics (LSE) and St Stephens College, said he would strive towards attaining world class status in terms of students, infrastructure and faculty in IIM-L, besides ensuring transparency to both internal and external stakeholders.

"We get a lot of RTI applications. I would like that all such information is made available in the public domain beforehand," he said.

Meanwhile, he said IIM-L would welcome more female students in the campus, although without any quota system.

"The main reason for the skewed female representation in B-schools is the lesser number of girls opting for them. We would like to have 40-50 percent of women students in our campus and for that measures like giving them an additional weightage could be considered, apart from counselling them before interviews," he said.