Hero Group promoters setting up university in Haryana

Promoters of $5 billion conglomerate Hero Group has tied up with Imperial College of London to open an university Near Manesar in Haryana by the middle of this year that will offer specialised courses in engineering, technology and management, and promote research and innovation.

Sunil Kant Munjal, joint managing director of Hero MotoCorp and the guiding force behind the new initiative, said the university will start functioning from July this year.

The new university is named after Hero Group co-founder and chairman Brij Mohan Lall Munjal. It is being developed in two phases. In the first phase, it will offer courses in engineering and management through two institutions - School of Engineering and Technology and School of Management.

In the second phase, four additional schools are proposed to be opened - School of Liberal Arts, School of Art, Architecture and Design, School of Natural Sciences and School of Law.

"Initially we will take 480 students - 360 in engineering and 120 in management. The capacity will be gradually expanded to 8,000 students," Munjal told IANS in an interview here.

The university will have fully residential campus spread over 50 acres of land and funded by the Hero Group promoters.

Munjal refused to share details of the investment required for the new initiative.

"This will be funded by the family. We have been doing this for years. We are already actively involved in primary, secondary as well as higher education," he said.

The Munjal family, promoter of the world's largest two-wheeler maker, claims to have educated and empowered over 200,000 Indians through various initiatives.

The university, located at Sidhrawali village, near Manesar in Gurgaon district of Haryana, is on the Delhi-Jaipur highway, nearly 50 km from the Delhi international airport.

Sunil Kant Munjal said the Imperial College of London will be the mentor institute for the school of management.

"They (Imperial College) will be actively involved in the process, whether it is related to student selection, course design, faculty development or research," Munjal said.

President and Rector of Imperial College London Robert Keith O'Nions said the best of the management education practices will be blended and taught to the students at the new university.

"We will mentor School of Management at BMU. A lot of things will be introduced from Imperial. At the same time Imperial will also learn from this," O'Nions said.

The new university will offer bachelors, masters and doctoral programmes, said Akshay Munjal.

A grandson of Brij Mohan Lall Munjal, he said construction works and recruitment for faculties and other staffs for the university was going on and it will be functional by July.

On student selection procedure, he said the selection will be based on rankings in standard entrance examinations like Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for engineering and Common Admission Test (CAT) Management Aptitude Test (MAT) for management courses.

"We will also conduct interviews and take some additional tests. Marks in 10th and 12th standards will also be taken into account in the selection process," he said.

(Gyanendra Kumar Keshri can be reached at gyanendra.k@ians.in)