Kelley School announces new India initiatives

Last August, President Michael McRobbie traveled to the Indian Institute of Management in Lucknow, India, and now several initiatives have begun between the Kelley School of Business and the IIM.

The partnership between universities will open two one-year programs in India, one for students enrolled in IIM-Lucknow and another for working professionals in India.
Graduate certificate programs will be offered in the fields of business analytics and global strategy.

“Today, business leaders are confronted with extraordinarily complex decisions and are faced with the challenge of addressing those decisions with mountains of data,” Dean of the Kelley School Dan Smith said.

The program will offer enrollment to about 100 students interested in business analytics, an emerging field that involves the use of data to guide decision making.
Organizations’ goals are often to improve productivity, increase profits and create and exploit competitive advantages through this study.

In February, the Kelley School opened the Institute for Business Analytics in Bloomington, making IU one of the first schools to specialize in this emerging field, along with Fordham and Yale universities.

The partnership with IIM-Lucknow will aim to create a similar program.

“The Kelley School wants to continue to be seen and recognized as a world leader in business education,” Smith said. “To be of that stature, it’s imperative that we have relationships with world-class business schools in emerging markets such as India and that we deliver programs in those emerging high-growth markets.”

Associate Dean of the Kelley School Munirpallam Venkataramanan said India’s growing economy and the global nature of the program make it a “natural” choice for the Kelley School to extend its reach.

“We do really just do anything like a corporation,” Venkataraman said. “We want to be globally recognized and these partners will provide us the global presence.”

More than 850 Indian students are already enrolled at IU, and about 400 are enrolled in Kelley’s graduate or undergraduate programs. The school has 14 faculty members of Indian descent, and Venkataramanan said he hopes the partnership will inspire more research conferences and faculty exchanges.

“It is a great experience to see common values while at the same time appreciating the differences,” he said.

This understanding of values will allow students to better compete in markets in India, a country with a GDP that accelerated by 6.1 percent in 2011.

Yet even the signing of contracts is unique to the country, as Indian employers are more interested in a personal relationship with the individual they are doing business with, rather than just the economic possibilities.

“In a way we are extremely efficient, but in a way they have a lot more understanding of the other person,” Venkataramanan said. “Going forward we anticipate having more of our students in the Kelley School engaged with students from the Indian Institute of Management in joint projects.”

The program also has the potential to grow in other emerging markets, such as China, South Africa and Brazil.

“This is really important for the school because the area of business analytics is so essential to effective business practices in the coming years,” Smith said. “It’s so important that we prepare leaders for this new area of competition.”