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Indian School of Business goes on-stream on July 1

Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad

The Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business, promoted by 50 top corporates from across the globe to train tomorrow's business leaders, will kick off its operations on July 1.

Pramath Sinha, ISB chief executive officer, told newsmen on Wednesday that Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will inaugurate the one-year post-graduate programme on July 1. The first batch has 130 students. Regular classes, however, will commence on July 4.

Though the formal inauguration of the school building on the sprawling 250-acre campus at Gachchi Bowli on the outskirts of Hyderabad is slated for December this year, the management is starting the programme from July as the requisite facilities are in place for the first batch of students.

Four permanent faculty members and 32 visiting faculty members will conduct the course.

The ISB is affiliated with Kellogg Graduate School of Management (Northwestern University), Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and London Business School.

These prestigious management institutions have helped the ISB design the curriculum. They have also agreed to provide visiting faculty to ISB and help it establish a research centre.

The deans of these schools will sign the ISB graduation certificate.

The ISB is being set up with an outlay of Rs 3 billion. The school will have an intake of 260 students in the academic year 2002 and 520 students by 2003.

It will have 16 permanent faculty members by 2003. The school will start short-duration executive education programmes in November this year. The campus will provide students with state-of-the-art infrastructure, global connectivity, wired classrooms, recreational facilities and accommodation in the 'student village'.

Sinha said that of the 130 students in the first batch, 20 are ladies. The batch has an average GMAT score of 690, work experience of 4.5 years and average age of 26 years. These students were selected from 1,000 applicants after an elaborate process. Thirty-one students are married, while the others are single.

"Our students are comparable to the best in leading B-schools across the globe and their GMAT score is considered to be pretty high by global standards," he added.

Only one student is from Hong Kong and the others are Indians, including 10 NRIs.

All the 130 students were employed, but 110 left their jobs to take the course. They worked in leading Indian companies and multinational corporations such as Accenture, Citibank, Arthur Andersen, GE Capital, HLL, HP, ICICI, Infosys, ITC, Reliance, Wipro and Satyam.

They have varied backgrounds and come from fields like engineering, sciences, software, and fashion designing.

The one-year course costs Rs 1 million, including tuition fees of Rs 750,000 and boarding and lodging expenses of Rs 250,000. The ISB has tied up with the ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and State Bank of India for student loans.

Almost 50 per cent of the students have availed of bank loans. A dozen students have been offered scholarships this year.

The course is divided into eight terms of five weeks each and offers students specialisation in technology, entrepreneurship, analytical finance and strategic marketing.

Apart from instilling knowledge, the ISB will focus on building the personal skills of its students. The curriculum is prepared to meet the needs of the fast-changing global markets and designed to make full use of the 52-week course period without putting undue pressure on the students.

The visiting faculty, drawn from Kellogg, Wharton, London Business School, Harvard Business School, Graduate School (Stanford University), University of Chicago and Duke University, comprises a global mix of academics to ensure continuous exposure to international insights, thinking and research.

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