In today’s environment of globally competitive enterprise, individuals have to hone their skills to establish themselves and stand in the front line. Aspiring students who wish to make a mark as efficient business leaders are always at the lookout for the most competent MBA colleges, which would educate and nurture them so that they can proceed towards becoming tomorrow’s tycoons.
This is where prominent colleges such as ICFAI Business School, Mumbai (IBS Mumbai) play transformational roles. The college was incepted in 1995 under the inspiring leadership of Late Shri N J Yasaswy. Starting as one of the IBSs in India with just one classroom in Khalsa College, Wadala, IBS Mumbai moved to an independent campus in Goregoan, a suburb in Mumbai. In 2008, IBS Mumbai set up its campus of over 1.25 lac square feet in the scenic, elite, and picturesque location of Hiranandani Gardens Powai, Mumbai. Over the years, IBS Mumbai has become a top preference for management programme aspirants. It is ranked among the best B-Schools in India and 14th among the top 10 Private B-Schools in India.
IBS Mumbai has an infrastructure befitting any premier B-school. Its entire campus is wi-fi enabled. All its 32 classrooms are fully AC enabled with state-of-art smartboards and latest AV/sound systems. The classrooms are equipped for hybrid learning using a dedicated learning management system. The school has a large atrium that serves as an amphitheatre, a 500-seater auditorium, a gymnasium, and common rooms for students. It has a conference room which is used as an MDP center, a Career Management Cell, and three cafeterias and two food kiosks.
The Centre for Language Development provides just the right ambience for students to hone their language skills. The school’s library and reading rooms occupying 15000 sq. feet area house more than 40000 books, 200 Journals, and 10 databases for the students to learn from. Its IT center is equipped with 80 desktops with LAN and high-speed internet connectivity of 100MBps. All in all, IBS Mumbai offers a well-appointed learning environment for 2200 students and 40+ full-time faculty members. Over 150 visiting faculty are judiciously drawn from a pool of industry professionals.
Prioritizing Enhancement in Learning Outcomes
Team IBS Mumbai believes that academic rigor and action learning are the best ways to prepare future managers and leaders for the rigor of corporate life. With a comprehensive, industry-relevant curriculum that is updated every year to bring in the very latest in business, the school encourages students to learn through action and experience. The course is designed to suit industry requirements in terms of knowledge skills and competencies. ICFAI Business School, Mumbai believes in learning by doing and therefore, it’s pedagogy is based on the case study method and problem-solving approach, encouraging students to take decisions, work in teams, live projects, and active experimentation. This is effectively done through live projects.
The school’s emphasis on co-curricular development motivates students to organise themselves into a variety of clubs and domain groups, and participate in events that develop entrepreneurial orientation and allow students to act as practicing managers while they study.
The Erudite Spearhead
IBS Mumbai’s foundation stone was laid by its Founder, Late Shri N J Yasawsy. His vision and teachings guide and shape every step of the IBS Journey. Today, strategic and day-to-day directions are provided by Dr Pritee Saxena, Sr. Director and Campus Head, IBS Mumbai. She operates under the overall guidance of Dr R.R. Reddy (Registrar IBS HO).
Dr Pritee is in charge of overall administration and is Head of Placements. She is ably assisted by a competent faculty and administration team. Since 2013, the school’s near 100% placement record is noteworthy. Prof Hemant Purandare, Dy.Director-Academics ensures the wholesome and rigorous academic development of each student.
Keeping student development at the heart of her mission, Dr Pritee follows a hands-on leadership style. She leaves no stone unturned to ensure that each student gets more than adequate attention in career development, blending course content with contemporary industry skills requirements, matching students with job profiles, and giving them all the inputs required to get their dream jobs.
Beyond Traditional Teachings
Student activities are the heart of IBS Mumbai. Students get to harness their intellect and energy through over 22 clubs and committees that include domain Clubs, such as Kautilya, the Finance Club, Markophilia, the Marketing Club, Cultural Clubs such as Soundstreet, the Music Club and Parivartan, the Social Outreach Club. The clubs function as mini organizations and help students experience and develop organizing skills along with managing budgets, maintaining discipline, promoting their brand, and by being the brand ambassadors of IBS on social media. The clubs play a critical role in transforming the students into allrounders and potential leaders.
Making Students Future-Ready
IBS Mumbai has a unique summer internship programme. Unlike any other B-School, it is a graded programme where each student is continually mentored during the internship posting by an industry mentor and a faculty member. ICFAI Business School is the only B-School to embed credit courses in soft skills in each semester, through which it gives utmost importance to personality and life skills development. Adaptability, employability, resilience and agility- which are crucial to career growth, along with the ability to communicate and behave appropriately in all business and life situations are imbibed in each student from the very beginning. Entrepreneurship skills are developed through the Entrepreneurship Club while the cultural clubs help in honing innate talent in leading a well-rounded quality life.
Live projects enable the students to get early exposure to corporate life. All Clubs act as mini organizations to help students act as organizational citizens.
As for futuristic skills, to keep up with a fast-changing world of work, students can join additional certification programmes, developed by the school through industry partnership. IBS Mumbai organized 12 customised certification programmes for its Class of 2022, in Data Analytics, Digital Marketing, Financial Modelling, Power BI, EY-CAFTA, Versant, and Real Estate Management. It also included Contemporary Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Corporate Credit Analysis and Credit Ratings, HR Analytics, and SQL. The certification programmes were segregated into knowledge-based and skill-based modules and further classified as industry-expert led, corporate led, and masterclass series. Students were trained by senior industry experts on requisite, job-specific skills. Training on digital tools and analytics through Microsoft Excel, Python, Tableau, and ‘R’, helped students gain an edge in placements, and meet the placement challenge during the pandemic.
Achievements Galore
Throughout its illustrious journey of achieving excellence in curricular, extra-curricular, and career-development endeavours, ICFAI Business School Mumbai has achieved many noteworthy landmarks. It has achieved continual success in 100% placements year after year with promising career paths for every student. The school has a unique summer internship programme spread over 14 weeks and is graded for performance. The internship gives students unique industry exposure. During the lockdown, ICFAI Business School Mumbai was the first to transition from offline to online mode and then to hybrid classes.
Prepared for the Pandemic
Team IBS believes that a strong face-to-face connect with batchmates, their seniors, and faculty is a critical aspect in student well-being and personality development. To ensure that this continues even in the online mode, IBS Mumbai allotted a ‘(Faculty)Section In-charge’ to each section, who safeguarded student care through continual communication between teachers and students on various aspects of the learning process and ensured that each student gets complete attention. Students were welcomed back to the campus from November 2021 in a hybrid mode. Only fully vaccinated faculty and staff are permitted to attend offline classes on rotation. The entire campus and all the Learning Halls are sanitised frequently. Hybrid classes are conducted by maintaining social distancing norms.
Paving the Road to the Future
Marching towards the future, ICFAI Business School intends to be known as the B-School that develops managers and leaders who are strong, resilient, and adaptable to changing employability needs with the right amount of resilience. Its goal is to ensure that every organisation has an IBS Mumbai student on board.
