HE Kenji Hiramatsu, Ambassador of Japan to India, and Takayuki Kitagawa, Consul General of Japan in Bengaluru, led a delegation to the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore to understand the goals of the newly launched India-Japan Study Centre.
The centre was inaugurated at IIM-B on September 14, when the two Prime Ministers were meeting in Ahmedabad to inaugurate the high-speed rail project in Gujarat. The Ambassador welcomed IIM-B’s initiative, saying, “The setting up of the India-Japan Study Centre is a very valuable and timely initiative, especially at a time when the India-Japan relationship in business and investment is perhaps at its best in history, guided by two strong leaders — Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Abe. Your study centre has our whole-hearted support.”
People connect
Explaining that he would like to focus on people-to-people exchange programmes between the two countries, especially faculty teaching Japanese language here, the Ambassador said it was a privilege to work on more collaborations with IIM-B.
Hiramatsu said Bengaluru was important to Japan as many Japanese companies are located here. “It is a global start-up city and a city of intellectuals — an exciting city for us,” he remarked, adding that he would like to invite more Japanese companies to Bengaluru as early as December.
Krishna Sundar, Chairperson, India-Japan Study Centre, gave the Ambassador and his team an overview of the centre. Dwelling in detail on IIM-B’s partnerships with six top universities in Japan, he said support from more universities, government agencies and industry houses in Japan would certainly help in expanding and enhancing the exchange, research and industry connects.
The delegation sought details on the language training programme, the student exchange programme and the training programme for executives.
IIM-B’s Deans Shainesh G and MS Narasimhan, and faculty members Subhashis Gupta, Haritha Saranga, Ishwar Murthy, Jayadev M, Nishant Kumar Verma and Rajeev Tripathi, were present during the interaction.