Bridging the gap: LIBA signs MoU with TCS

Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA), Chennai, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Friday announced a partnership to design and deliver a management programme focused on Business Analytics. LIBA said it would offer the course in the next academic year, 2017-18. Both part-time, one-year and full-time, two-year-long courses will be offered in this specialisation.

A memorandum of understanding was signed in the presence of Fr. P Christie S.J, Director, LIBA; Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, Vice-President, HR, TCS, and other officials. Speaking on the occasion, Fr. Christie said: “It is a momentous event for LIBA to sign a MoU with TCS as an industry partner to offer programmes in the area of Business Analytics. With its expertise, TCS will be able to add value to the students of LIBA.” He added that students with a background in IT, programming, and data mining would especially benefit from the course.

Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, Vice-President, HR, TCS said: “Analytics is emerging as a key growth area spanning industries. The need of the hour is talent that can work on delivering carefully-crafted analytics solutions, insights and recommendations to businesses. The courses that TCS will design as part of the collaboration with LIBA will bring contemporary, application-oriented inputs to the classroom.”

He added that TCS’ ‘Train the Trainer’ (TTT) programme would be one of the key highlights of the courses offered, wherein TCS will be training faculty at LIBA, in a long-term association.

Speaking to BL on Campus on the event’s sidelines, Bandyopadhyay said that, across the globe, there would be 4.4 million data scientists by 2018 and that demand for such skills would grow by 15 per cent year on year. “This collaboration that TCS has undertaken with LIBA will help train managers who know and understand data mining and data visualisation, which, in turn, will make them better leaders,” he says. TCS already has tie-ups with arts and engineering colleges to offer courses in Big Data.

Speaking about the MBA, Bandyopadhyay said there was a need for students to have a ‘liberal arts’ slant, which is lacking in the graduates currently entering the workforce. “New managers are not making connections or thinking outside the box. The MBA should include this as well,” he said.