The two-day FPM alumni meet at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) concluded today after a series of lively and insightful panel discussions. The Fellow Programme in Management (FPM) is IIM-A’s doctoral programme which is currently in its 45th year which has seen 331 graduates so far.
In the inaugural session of the event on Friday morning, the institute released a series of five publications. Alumni came together with current students, the deans and the FPM chairperson to release a compendium of all 331 thesis abstracts, an updated FPM brochure, a profile booklet of all current students and prospective graduating students, as well as a white paper highlighting the research productivity of IIM-A FPM alumni over the years. This was followed by a felicitation of the senior-most alumni, the faculty members with maximum contribution to the FPM, as well as the former FPM chairs.
The next session featured three panel discussions highlighting contributions of FPM alumni in different sectors. In the first panel, former Director of IIM Ahmedabad professor Samir Barua, former director of IIM Calcutta professor Shekhar Chaudhuri, director of IIM Indore professor Rishikesha Krishnan, and former director-in-charge of IIM-A professor Ajay Pandey discussed the contributions of FPM alumni to management and nurturing of academic institutions. The second panel discussion was on contributions to research and teaching, featuring IIM-A’s senior-most FPM alumnus professor Abhinandan Jain, senior faculty member from IIM Calcutta professor Sougata Ray, and current FPM chair professor Amit Garg. The third panel discussed contributions to industry, and featured managing partner of ILS Prasanth, vice president at Reliance Industries Ashish Rana, and professor Sunil Sharma from the business policy area at IIM-A.
The afternoon session began with the three deans and the FPM chairperson coming together to discuss opportunities to deepen the engagement of FPM alumni with the institute. Following this, the last discussion of the day was on “Industry-Academia Interactions: Opportunities and Challenges”, featuring a high-profile panel consisting of professor Pradip Khandwalla – former Director of IIM-A, Professor Indira Parikh – former Dean at IIM-A, Dr. Siddhartha Roy – Economic Advisor at the Tata Group, Snehal Desai – Head of Techno-Commercial at Adani-Welspun Ltd., Professor Amit Karna from the Business Policy area at IIM-A and Professor Amit Garg, current FPM chairperson at IIM-A.
The day ended with the alumni and current students bonding over a cricket match, a yoga session and a cultural programme. The second day began with a campus walk, followed by another set of informative panel discussions. In the first panel, Professor Rekha Jain from the Information Systems area and Professor Jayanth Varma from the Finance area at IIM-A discussed the issues of financial inclusion and ICT, especially in the current context of demonetisation.
In the second panel, three recent FPM alumni from IIM-A — Dr. Vaibhav Chaturvedi from CEEW, Professor Bhaskar Bhowmick from IIT Kharagpur, and Dr. Anurag Saxena from IIPH Gandhinagar — shared their experiences and the growing importance of top-quality academic research. The third panel discussion was on Sustainability and Entrepreneurship and featured Dr. Kamal Kishore Sharma, Dr. Astad Patakia, Dr. (Ms.) Sanjivan Bajaj from FICCI, and Dr. Pankaj Jain.
This was followed by a presentation by the IIM-A Case Centre, as well as presentations by current FPM students of their ongoing doctoral research. Finally, the event concluded with a vote of thanks by the organizers and closing remarks by the Dean (Faculty) Professor Errol D’Souza, and the FPM Chairperson Professor Amit Garg.
On the successful completion of this event, Professor Amit Garg said, “The Fellow Programme in Management at IIM-A brings practice and theory together. This is especially important in the context of a rapidly developing country like India where high-quality management research needs to be both theoretically sound as well as practically relevant. The FPM alumni of IIM-A are very important for nation-building in this challenging but exciting environment, especially as the number of IIMs in the country is being increased”.