ISB looks for international diversity

Situated in the hub of information technology the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad is set to expand its horizons in attracting students from the Asian region specially Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to add to its repertoire of Indian students following their one year MBA course .

The ISB as it is popularly known is situated just 45 minutes away from the Hyderabad International Airport which has direct flights from Sri Lanka. The sprawling 260 acre campus is ideally located in the now emerging IT hub in the city which has household names such as Microsoft, Virtusa, NIIT and other call centres running a 24/7 business.

There is a dramatic, shift from the once known 'silicon valley' Bangalore to the emerging city of Hyderabad which has seen a fast track development process in Andra Pradesh under their former Chief Minister Chandra Babu Naidu.

The ISB is the brainchild of Rajat Gupta who was the senior partner worldwide of McKinsey and Company who together with his business associates formed the ISB in 1998.

It was Gupta's vision to build a world class Business School in India to compete with the well known B schools such as the Kellogg School of management USA, the London Business School and the Wharton University of Pennsylvania, the INSEAD in France, the UCLA, Stanford, Chicago, Duke and Texas among others.

The ISB's intense MBA program is designed exclusively for graduate level company executives who have at least two years' work experience. The students are required to stay on campus and the ISB provides for all requirements of the students as well as his or her family-spouses and children are allowed to stay on for the duration of the program and accommodation facilities are available on the campus itself at a fee.

Director - Admissions of the ISB Dr. V.K. Menon said their Institute is setting new benchmarks in the field of Management Education through their one-year MBA program and short-term executive management courses.

The MBA program is rigorous and the faculty insists that young professionals should possess a convincing academic record while evaluating this performance, they consider the student's results of the GMAT, GRE exams for admission.

The ISB also offers sponsorship programs for corporates to plan the career paths of highly successful employees by grooming them for senior management positions within the company. A place on the sponsorship program is an incentive for an employee that will encourage him or her to stay and grow with the company and offers employees a way to get their employers to finance the MBA.

The ISB has successfully tied-up with the state Bank of India (SBI) and other leading banks to provide upto 95% of the cost of the degree without any collateral. Menon said that they hope to discuss the possibility of their SBI Bank branch in Sri Lanka to provide for loans to students who wish to enrol from Sri Lanka in future.

The entire campus is networked and students through their laptops can login at any place with the faculty. All classrooms have tele conferencing and video conferencing facilities and students can witness lectures by experts from classrooms across the world live or interact with CEOs in their boardrooms as well.

All students need to have their laptops with them since the books and library caters to online data bases, 2500 e-journals and 1000 AV resources and print journals. The ISB has continued to have an excellent placement record according to the faculty. The average international offer being US $ 900,000 with the highest at a record of US $ 151,768. The 40 women in the class of 2005 had got as many as 52 offers.

The Governing Board of the ISB has several leading CEO's and MDs of renowned companies in Asia. Among them are Manvinder S-Bonga Chairman Hindustan lever Ltd, Rahul Bajaj, Chairman/MD Bajaj Auto Ltd., Bon-Moo Koo, Chairman LG Electronics, Adi Godrej Chairman Godrej Group, Jurgen Schrempp chairman Daimler Chrysler and Rajendra Pawar Chairman NIIT. (PM)