Shift From Functional To Role-based Preparedness

Jagdish Sheth School of Management (JAGSoM), Bengaluru, started as Institute of Finance and International Management (IFIM) in 1995 and was rechristened in 2020. Located in lush green environs of Electronic City of Bengaluru, at the back of Infosys, is led by the visionary management educationist Atish Chattopadhyay. Earlier the director of IMT Ghaziabad, Chattopadhyay describes some revolutionary steps that the institute has taken on the curriculum front to groom students to be successful professionals.
 

Can you describe the institute’s origin as IFIM and its journey, including the struggle to establish its credentials?

In mid-Nineties, VB Barode, the founder of Dal Street Investment Journal (DSIJ), hailing from Siddhi in Maharashtra, who funded a few academics, had himself initially struggled in the student days for want of funds. He approached his father’s employer for funds, who extended help. Barode went on to become Indian Revenue Service officer and commissioner of Income Tax in Mumbai. This was the time when Indian economy was just opening up in the Eighties and he quit to start DSIJ. The liberalisation happened in the Nineties but the stock market was still run on traditional lines. He wanted to professionalise this sector. He also felt the need to start a dedicated institute, specialising in finance. 

The institute started from a rented premises in Maharashtra but as per AICTE requirement to have own campus in order to get AICTE approval, it took up land in the Electronic City when it was coming up. It was under Barode’s son Sanjay Barode’s aegis that the institute’s next phase of growth started, around 2010. The institute has not only got an ISO certification, it became the sixth institute in India to have AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, a US accrediting body) accreditation.
 

What did it take to get the accreditation?

The first factor is the vision - to nurture holistic, socially responsible and continuously employable professionals and strategy. The second factor is aligning the curriculum and delivery to the vision, which includes getting the right faculty and the third factor is impact. What you promise, you have to deliver. That is how the accreditation happened. That was the point at which I joined.

How has the institute established its standing?

The country needs far more good institutions and the key to have that is to have good people and good leadership. My grandfather, father and other family members have shown me the path, by being part of institutes as they were being built up from scratch.

When I joined, I realised we won’t get the same quality of input as 99 percentile students go to top IIMs. Also, there is the concept of ‘return on investment’ (ROI), whereas ROI as starting package is a wrong indicator. A passout from a top B-school can earn lakhs since day one, whereas a postgraduate from AIIMS gets Rs 80,000 a month.
I also realised that whatever we do, our effort won’t be recognised and therefore I decided to take a break from Indian rankings in 2018. We created a curriculum along with National Human Resource Development Network (NHRDN). We surveyed what are the industry needs and found out 10 needs, based on which we framed our curriculum. It is aimed at nurturing students to become T shaped professionals. There are foundational skills, social skills, design thinking required for everybody. And you do marketing, finance etc.  But then you focus on the career track. And we attracted very good faculty – PhDs from institutes like IIM Calcutta, Bangalore, SPJIMR, MDI and Stanford.

We focussed on doing ‘learner potential multiplier’. We take on learners and through our interventions, make them successful. This is not required in top institutes. This is the difference between top institutes and us.
After two years, we participated in the QS rankings and we came within top 100 in marketing and in finance & analytics. Like Vivekananda became a Swami after his Chicago address, we have to arrive from abroad. This is how we jumped from 48 to 26 in Indian rankings too. In terms of learner success, we are now at 14 and in future orientation, we are in top 10. So we must have done something right.

The transformation that happened was shifting from functional preparedness to role-based preparedness. For example, you study marketing, but you prepare for a role. We also need people in 10 to 12 lakh bracket who will do sales and analytics jobs. Not everybody will be a strategy person; there are people who will be working on the ground too.

The institute was renamed Jagdish Sheth School of Management on the name of Padma Bhushan Awardee and eminent author, to create a new identity. We have global faculty and curriculum which is internationally acclaimed. International accreditation and the new name is reflective of a global mindset.

Meha Mathur

BW Reporters The author works as Senior Associate Editor with BW Businessworld