Leading the change

The jetty on one of the seven natural lakes belonging to the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) is the place where students gather for a chat, watching sunrise or sunset.

It is also the favourite place for the IIM-C bands to play their music.

Apart from its academic excellence, the natural beauty of the 135-acre lush-green campus is something that few other B-schools in the country can offer.

“This is I think the only IIM campus where you can go for bird watching or just sit on a bench overlooking the lakes. A lookalike of the Howrah Bridge connecting one side of the campus with the other over one of the lakes is another one of our popular hangouts. It is a pleasure to sit with our feet dangling from the bridge, getting drenched in the rain,” says Hariharan Sriram, who passed out in 2010 and now works with a consultancy firm.

Set up in 1961, the institute is celebrating its golden jubilee year.

“What started as a small institute has today blossomed into one of the leading management schools in South Asia and the Asia-Pacific region. And this has happened not only because we have been getting the cream of the students through the Common Admission Test but because this institute has some of the best teachers in the world,” says a second-year student of the flagship post-graduate diploma in management (PGDM) course.

What does the industry say about IIM-C?
“IIM-C is undoubtedly one of the best management institutes of the country. The courses match those of any international management school in the world and, hence, its grads are preferred to those from many other business schools,” says Sandipan Chakrabarty, managing director, Tata Ryerson and president of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce.

Ashok Banerjee, a 1968-70 batch student of the institute, gives the institute all credit for all that he has achieved.

Banerjee, a former vice-president, Indian subcontinent, of Australian beer major Foster’s, is currently professor of strategy and marketing of the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management.

He says, “I was (in) the fifth-batch of IIM-C. And even then, the curriculum was designed in a manner to help students take up any challenge and emerge a winner,” he adds.

Talking about the way exams were conducted at IIM-C, Banerjee says: “We were allowed to go to the exam hall with books and students were even free to visit the library and consult reference books while taking the exam. This concept was unheard of then. But even after consulting these books we used to find it tough to come up with answers. The reason was that the questions were meant to test how much we had learnt and there was no chance of scoring well by mugging.”

This concept has now been adopted by all the top institutions in the country.

IIM-C graduates have now become the benchmark for industry.

“The way the students are screened there and the tough process they go through make them the best selected ones,” says Aniruddha Lahiri, president of

The Chatterjee Group, the co-promoter of Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd.

“It ensures that you have the best of the lot,” he adds.

FACT FILE
Established in: November 1961
Main courses: PG diploma in management (PGDM), PG diploma in computer-aided management (PGDCM)
Other courses: Fellowship programme in management, one-year residential PG programme for executives (PGPEX), one-year full time residential PG programme for executives for visionary leadership in management (PGPEX-VLM).
Course fee: Rs13.5 lakh for the two-year course
Number of students per batch: 2011-2013 batch has 462 students
Faculty-student ratio: 1:10
Facilities offered: IIM-C has a state-of-the-art financial research and trading lab equipped with a Bloomberg terminal, which provides access to real-time national and international financial data, market information, business news, and cutting edge financial analysis tools.
Day zero placements in 2011: The 2011 batch of 388 students went into the final placements with 230-plus offers in hand, including figures from pre-placement offers and the laterals process.
Top recruiters: McKinsey & Co., Bain & Co., Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Scotland, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, UBS, Hindustan Unilever, Procter & Gamble
Famous alumni:Ajit Balakrishnan, founder, chairman and CEO of Rediff.com; Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi, chairman and CEO of Pepsico; Ramachandra Guha, historian