JK Lakshmipat University, in collaboration with the All India Management Association (AIMA), has unveiled a virtual lab for management students for business simulation exercises.
Dr RL Raina, Vice-Chancellor, JK Lakshmipat University, in his welcome address, mentioned that the BizLab will expose students to real economic, environmental and business issues related to finance, operations, marketing and other business functions and that with the support of AIMA, it can develop and evolve as the most effective learning tool for management in times to come.
The digital business laboratory was inaugurated virtually by chief guest of the event, Dr Ajay Data, Founder & CEO, Data XGen Technologies, in the presence of dignitaries including HP Singhania, Vice Chairman and MD, JK Paper, Neeraj Kapoor, Director, AIMA, Dr RL Raina, Vice Chancellor, JKLU and Asheesh Gupta, Pro-Vice Chancellor, JKLU.
Prof Asheesh Gupta said, “For us, the establishment of the AIMA Biz Lab at JKLU, the first in Rajasthan, marks a very purposeful milestone. There is conclusive scientific evidence that we learn best by doing. Management education requires being able to integrate principles and theories with business realities allowing learners to practise these in near-real-life situations - learning that cuts through functional silos – as problems rarely come packaged as purely marketing or organisational or finance problems.
“The purpose of our MBA programme, beyond imparting domain knowledge, is to help students learn how to integrate and use knowledge that is available and to be life-long learners. The AIMA Biz Lab, is a strategic step in this direction because AIMA also brings the advantage of being industry and market backed and understands management students’ capabilities.”
HP Singhania said, “Higher education today should be able to translate into employability or the ability of people to do things. They should be able to become useful and contributing members of society. A broader degree of knowledge and skills can be obtained from an inter-disciplinary programme, whereby people can come out with more useful skills rather than mere technical knowledge.”
Endorsing Singhania's statement, AIMA’s Kapoor said education has to be contemporised. “Being stuck with knowledge in a single field or aspect is very detrimental for students. They should be industry-ready and have the ability to take up challenges. In such unprecedented times, we need to be innovating all the time. Education should be such that it should prepare us for crisis management, and we need to look at management education in a different way, using the four pillars of using technology, skilling yourself, having an entrepreneurial mindset and continuous learning. The idea of the business lab is to expose the students about what is happening in the management world. It would be enhancing their capability and aiding their learning.”
Elaborating on the technological boom the country is witnessing currently, Dr Ajay Datasaid, “We are in a very unique situation. If you look at the start-up ecosystem in the past, the most valuable start-ups were those which could solve a large problem. Today, we have thousands of problems and technology is helping us solve them more conveniently. More than 80 per cent of the people are conveniently working from home today. Events are getting delivered online. I was shocked when I saw bhajan and kirtans on virtual meetings. This is the new normal for us. Same is with education. People who haven’t updated themselves are getting left behind. Education has become more inclusive and we need to create more hireable and ready individuals from universities. With AIMA, we have lot of industry knowledge that will come in and it will help bridge the gap in academics.”