IIM Bangalore welcomed a new batch to its doctoral programme and the two-year, full-time MBA programmes — Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) and Post Graduate Programme in Business Analytics (PGP-BA). The 46th batch of doctoral programme has 16 students, 525 to the PGP, and 45 to the PGP-BA.
Chief guest and alumnus NS Kannan, CEO, ICICI Prudential, delivered a special lecture. A part of the PGP batch of 1991, a gold medal recipient for best all-around performance, he referred to his academic experience as a “game-changer.”
“Do not join the bandwagon, try to lead a balanced life, make best use of IIMB’s resources, learn from inside as well as outside the classroom, read more and at random, develop perspectives and integrate them to your advantage, network beyond the IIM ecosystem and nurture diverse friendships. As you go ahead in your careers, build on resilience. IIMB is a big opportunity to reflect on your life and decide on your goals. In the process, find your passion and your calling,” he said.
Varied backgrounds
Of the 16 doctoral students, nine are men and seven are women. While three candidates have joined in the strategy area, there are two candidates each in the finance and accounting, marketing, production and operations management, public policy, economics and social sciences, and entrepreneurship areas, with one candidate joining the decision sciences area.
For PGP, 81.7 per cent of the batch are from engineering backgrounds, one is a lawyer, and others are from a range of different streams. Among the engineers, 15 per cent of them are IITians, 24 per cent are from NITs, and 75 per cent come with an average work experience of 22 months. The average age of the batch is 24 years as with PGP-BA.
In PGP-BA, 37.7 per cent are men and 62 per cent are women. The maximum number of students have engineering backgrounds including 8 IIT-ians and 7 NITs, with an average work experience of 13.7 months.
Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIMB, welcomed the new batch, while Rahul Dé, Dean, Programmes, offered an overview of the programme. In his welcome address, Krishnan stated that the new curriculum is based on feedback from various industries and focuses on effective use of social media, the importance of data, environmental, social, and governance issues, communication skills, and the ability to come up with creative solutions to various issues in order to create digitally fluent leaders.