Media school eyes US facility

International School of Business and Media aims to become the first educational institute in India to acquire a private American university, brand it and market it to overseas students.

The institute plans to take over a private university on the west coast of the United States of America.

Talks on this were currently on.

ISB&M would be putting in around Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) for this venture, Pramod Kumar, founder president of ISB&M, said.

After the acquisition, the university will be renamed ISB&M overseas campus and would be marketed independently.

According to Kumar, the process with all the formalities would take around two years.

The institute was looking at a 2007 date for the overseas launch.

Kumar said the school had achieved 100 per cent placement since inception and this coupled with word of mouth from consulting, liaison and recruitment clients would make the venture a success.

It would seek to expand in other countries like United Kingdom and China later.

Kumar said acquisitions made the job of setting up an institute overseas much simpler and saved time needed for infrastructure creation.

Any opportunity in UK or China would be examined closely.

The institute opened its branch in Kolkata in 2004 and had 66 students at present for its programme in management.

The headcount would rise to about 100 this year.

Last year's media class of 20 students was expected to go up to 30 this year.

ISB&M offered online registered courses in association with Financial Times of London and the University of Edinburgh to its management and media students.

Besides Kolkata, ISB&M had campuses in Pune, New Delhi and Bangalore.

The institute's media programme created managers exclusively for the media environment, sensitised to the peculiarities of the media industry, he pointed out.

The rise in the number of newschannels and newspapers meant manager had to be aware of the needs of the industries, said Kumar.