13 Sep India’s premier B-school has devised a retooling strategy to stay relevant in the global village
Earlier this year, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) was ranked 24 in the Financial Times’s Global MBA Ranking 2016. It was the highest for an Indian institution, and it did not come as a surprise to many as IIMA, for the most part of its existence, has been recognised as the nation’s premier management institution. “IIMA is an aspirational brand and attracts the best students from across the country,” says Parag Pande, the managing director for human resources at Accenture India. But its high perch is precisely why the institute’s director, Ashish Nanda, is not resting easy.
“Education is going through some dramatic changes,” Nanda tells Forbes India over the phone from the US. The past decade has seen the emergence of several private business schools that have sought to overturn the dominance of the IIMs. Some, like the Indian School of Business (ISB), bring with them prestigious global alliances and access. Moreover, as Nanda admits, the expectations of the select few who make it to the institute every year are also changing. “We have to make sure that we continue to address the aspirations of our students,” he says.