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'We are all collaborating to create India's first global business school'

The unexpected rush at last Friday's interactive sessions with prospective students in Bombay has taken Ranjan Pal, executive director of the Indian School of Business, completely by pleasant surprise.

In the interval between the two sessions, Pal, in his early forties, wired up with cell-phone accessories, steps out of the venue and paces up and down the Taj Mahal hotel rooftop lobby restlessly. He consults his electronic diary and hurriedly makes half-a-dozen calls in five minutes, some of them long-distance. "Hey, sorry, I won't be able to make it for dinner. The response is so overwhelming that we are having an unscheduled second session," he says excitedly, leaning into the tiny microphone cord in his hand.

Before rushing back to the dais, Pal granted Associate Editor
Y Siva Sankar an exclusive interview.

You seem to be very excited. Is the rush unexpected?

The response is fantastic, much more than we had anticipated. We expected about 150 people; we have more than three times the figure. It's a great tribute to Professor Sumantra Ghoshal and the ISB. We are very optimistic.

What I've seen is that Professor Ghoshal has been asking this question, 'How many of you have applied?' And what we see is, not many have applied. And then he asks, 'How many of you are thinking of applying?' Quite a few hands go up. At the end of the session, what we have seen is, practically the whole room puts up their hands. So I think we are going to get a huge number of applications.

A few weeks back, The Financial Times hinted in an article that the ISB is not happy because you don't seem to be attracting the kind of students you want.

I think the article was actually misquoted. What Professor Ghoshal actually said was that we are looking for quality and we will continue to look for that. We have two more deadlines. We encourage people to apply.

Initially, yes, the application rate was a little bit on the slow side. But now it has begun to pick up quite rapidly. We have actually made about 25 offers of admission to people who are outstanding. We've had sessions with them in the last couple of days. They are all very excited to be part of the founding class of the Indian School of Business.

What do you think of a Rs 750,000 management course in India?

It is expensive, no doubt. But on the other hand, look at what we are offering. We are offering an international business school education at less than one-third the cost of what a top-class school in the US offers it for. So I think people just have to understand that.

Basically, you get what you pay for. We are not putting people up in huts. We are putting people up in four-bedroom apartments which are completely air-conditioned with full power back-up. It is literally an equivalent of living in a four-or five-star hotel. That’s the kind of service we will offer.

So obviously for that, a certain amount of money has to be paid. Even so, we have managed to keep the costs down, quite dramatically, I would say.

You have had road-shows for the ISB in major cities across the world. What has been the response?

We have had a good response in the US, Europe and Asia. But we are in early stages now. We are still disseminating information about the school. I must say, personally, as the executive director of the school, it has been a matter of great pride to be there alongside the Asian Institute of Management or Harvard Business School or whatever. Never ever before have I seen an Indian school out there. There was a huge amount of curiosity, surprise and interest in the school.

Literally, this is an idea whose time has come, given the faculty we are going to have, given the corporate backing, given that really Indians are behind the school, both on the faculty side and the corporate side.

We (Indian managers) are completely world class. So why not have a world-class institution back here?

Stalwarts of Corporate India are associated with the ISB. What does this signify?

It's tremendous that we have managed to get these corporates who are otherwise at each other's throats in terms of competition. We are all collaborating in this tremendous venture to create India's first global business school.

They are collaborating, they are co-operating, and also, each of them has given Rs 50 million. I mean, they get nothing for it. They have done it purely as philanthropy, purely out of their love for this school, purely for their desire to do this. It is an idea that has fired their imagination.

Do you think the ISB will start a trend where education will be perceived as a legitimate business?

I think the ISB will definitely set that trend where education will not be seen as a free good as the way it is in India. When you get a free good, you can see also that along with something that has no price, in terms of being free, there is also no value. Lot of education in India is really pretty mediocre.

The great thing about the ISB is that we do provide value for money. Once people recognise that, it will certainly lead to a lot of upgradation of education in India.

I'd like to encourage bright scholars to apply to the school, people who are risk-takers, people who are pioneers, people who see themselves as being different from the crowd because this is once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get involved in building India's first global business school. And 25 years from now, 50 years from now, you can turn around and tell your grandchildren or your children that you are part of this.

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