Infosys, ICICI, Edelweiss research chairs soon at IIM-A

Institute raises Rs 35 crore; to announce research chairs in corporate governance, macroeconomics

For the first time in three years, IIM Ahmedabad will be adding 12 more research chairs backed by donors like Infosys, ICICI Bank, Edelweiss, PwC, SAP and Crisil, among others. The B-school has raised around Rs 35 crore for these research chairs which will be set up in areas such as corporate governance, macroeconomics, societal development, finance and management, among others.

While the institute has announced three research chairs so far, including Nabard Chair in Agribusiness, RBI Chair in Finance & Economics and JSW Chair in Innovation & Public Policy, Ashish Nanda, director of IIM Ahmedabad said that the premier B-school will be announcing 12 more going further.

The 12 research chairs to be announced by IIM-A include Edelweiss Chair in Finance, Infosys Foundation Chair in Societal Development, PwC Chair in Financial Reporting & Corporate Governance, UTI Chair in Macroeconomics, ATS Chair in Housing & Infrastructure Management, Chandrika Tandon Chair in Leadership, Crisil Chair in Financial Markets, ICICI Chair in Strategic Management, Kasturbhai Lalbhai Chair in Management, Prof. MN Vora Chair in Marketing & Entrepreneurship, Reliance Capital Chair in Marketing, and SAP Chair in Social Innovation.

According to Nanda, the institute will be looking for faculty members to fill the chair positions from both within and outside the campus.

"We invite nominations both internally and externally. There is an external committee which looks at nominations and suggests name. Then the internal committee looks at the shortlists. And in the end we identify the chairs," Nanda said. Having identified areas of research chairs and raised funds from donors, IIM-A is now working on identifying "high quality" people to head the same.

The institute not only hopes these chairs will boost more research work among faculty peers within the institute but also attract quality talent from outside.

"The chairs are meant to honour faculty who are doing cutting edge work in research, teaching as well as course development, and engagement with practice and policy. We hope these chairs will create a feeling of enthusiasm within the faculty community to reach their potential. We hope that these chairs will also encourage people to consider this institute as a place to come to as an academic. It might help us in recruitment. It is early days just now for us, though," Nanda added.

While the Nabard Chair in Agribusiness is being chaired by IIM-A faculty member Vasant Gandhi, the RBI Chair in Finance and Economics is headed by Abhiman Das. Recently, faculty member Rakesh Basant took charge of the JSW Chair in Innovation and Public Policy.

Commenting on the future plans of the JSW Chair in Innovation and Public Policy, Basant said that qualitative research work on analysing R&D spend in private organisations would be attempted under the chair.