I want to see Symbiosis International University in QS ranking: R Raman

Interview with Director, SIBM

India has over 3,500 management schools and only a handful make it to any of the reputed international B-School rankings. R Raman, director, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM) wants to at least change this with Symbiosis International University (SIU) aiming for the QS World University rankings. In an interview with Shivani Shinde Nadhe, he talks about the new focus on research so that its standing in international rankings improve, the focus on entrepreneurship programme and placements. Edited excerpts:

In 2014 SIBM began a two-year course on "Innovation and Intrapreneurship". How has been the feedback so far?
When we started the programme in 2014 we received 700 applications, for this year, for a 40 seat course, we got 4,800 applications. We also changed the focus of the course to innovation and 'entrepreneurship' from intrapreneurship. Since the first batch of the course will pass out this year, and the focus was on intraprenuership, we will have five to six people wanting to start something on their own.

 

With the change in the focus of the course we are also bringing in new aspects. One, we will have business competition for all the MBA students of Symbiosis. Students will have two months time to work on their idea. We will have a panel of experts that will go through the plan, and winners will get prize of Rs 5-6 lakh.

Two, we plan to come out with a technology business incubator, for which we plan to apply for a grant from the GoI. This will be open for all students of SIU. We have already marked 10,000sq.ft of space for this. Even if we don't get a grant we will go ahead and create this incubator.

Third, we also plan to create an advisory board for which we are reaching out to our alumni network, who will give us strategic direction on the programme.

The demand for management students has been impacted with the quality of institutes going down. Has this impacted SIBM in any way?
We are constantly been told that we do not make it to the international rankings, and so on. This year the number of applications that we received were one of the highest in our history. We received 52,000 applications for our MBA course that has capacity of 180 students.

The number of new companies that are coming to our campus has also gone up, this includes new age companies and start ups. Our average salary for this year was Rs 14.45 lakh, an increase of 12 per cent year-on-year.

What steps are you taking to see that SIBM also makes it to the international ranking of best B-Schools?
Each ranking platforms have their own criterion of looking at institutes. Some give importance to research, and some to alumni network and the way students look at institutes. There are lot of different parameters.

In rankings by QS or Times Higher Education, research is given higher priority. Nearly 40-45 per cent is given to research. Conventionally, management schools in India have not focused on research, we have focused on consulting, MBPs, development programmes and other courses and we have continued to do so. Since now research is gaining importance we are also moving in that direction slowly. This year the IBM Research Grant in Predictive Analytics was given to us, we out did all B Schools in India.

The other area of rankings is called databases of Scopus, this is database of abstracts and citations of peer-reviewed literature.

Hence, we are focusing towards research. Our research focus started towards end of 2014 and early 2015, it takes time we will have some solid things to share in a year's time. We plan to recruit faculty and I am looking at people who are good at research. I want to see SIU in the QS ranking.

Any feedback from corporates on the shift towards research?
As we started telling a few of the corporate houses about this we have been approached by a few to do joint research. We have done joint research with Mahindra & Mahindra along with Singapore Management University to understand the skilling needs of automotive sector.

Harvard School of Business also is known for the case studies it published would SIBM look at something like that?
We have been using cases but not writing it. We have started to work of case studies. One of the cases written by our faculty is in the repository of IIM-A. Conventionally case studies run over 20-24 pages, so while this is required we feel that there is dearth for caselets or short cases that would generally take one to one-and-a-half page. Our aim is that in the next one year we should have two dozen cases in caselet's and create a repository which will be used by schools in India.