Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and the Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow yesterday (May 8) signed a deal to allow Kelley to make its first foray into the Indian market.
As a result of the partnership between the two schools, two graduate-level, yearlong certificate programs in the emerging field of business analytics and global strategy will be available to about 100 students. One program will be for students enrolled at IIM-Lucknow and another will be open to working professionals in India.
Ultimately, Kelley and IIM-Lucknow plan to partner to deliver a graduate degree program on business analytics, similar to what is already offered at IU.
“Our collaborative goal is to fundamentally advance the quality of decision-making by business leaders by improving their ability to draw meaningful insights from the massive amounts of data available to them today,” said Dan Smith, dean of the Kelley School, in a statement.
“Information systems and business analytics is a very strong area at Kelley,” said Devi Singh, director of IIM-Lucknow. “Their experience in developing programs successfully, particularly working closely with American and multinational companies — which have operations around the world, including in India — is impressive.
“As organizations become more global and complex, and as data volumes grow, they will need tools to make decisions that will have great impact in the future,” Singh added. “What we bring to the table is a well-trained faculty and an understanding and access to large Indian data and Indian corporations. I think it will be a good combination of our two schools and talents.”
Kelley’s student and faculty ties to India already were extensive. Of the more than 850 Indian students enrolled at IU, about 400 are enrolled in Kelley’s graduate and undergraduate programs. In recent years, students and faculty have frequently traveled to India for classes and social entrepreneurship activities. The school has 14 faculty of Indian descent.
Its Kelley Direct online MBA program paved the way for the new offerings with IIM-Lucknow through courses for employees at U.S. companies with major operations in India, including Cummins and General Motors. The students have traveled to IIM-Lucknow for an intensive week on campus featuring faculty from both schools.
Situated at the outskirts of the historic and culturally rich city about 400 kilometers southeast of Delhi, IIM-Lucknow was established in 1984, by the government of India, as a national-level school of excellence in management science. Today, it has about 1,350 graduate-level students enrolled full time in its in-residence programs, 90 full-time professors and five research centers. It also has a campus at Noida, which is in the suburbs of Delhi.
Kelley faculty have taught courses at IIM-Lucknow, and they will conduct collaborative case studies on business issues in both the United States and India as a result of the agreement. The two institutions also may establish joint faculty workshops.
Munirpallam A. Venkataramanan, associate dean for academic programs at Kelley and a native of Chennai, India, is gratified by the progressive development of his school’s activities in the South Asian country.
“In the changed world that we live in, the global universities not only will be here, but also be able to go to any part of the world — not just through your students but through programs,” Venkataramanan said. “It is pretty exciting. We’ve had a significant number of students coming in from India. … In India, this strategy works in part because of our great alumni there who have demonstrated the value of a Kelley education.”
Earlier this year, the Kelley School welcomed its new Institute for Business Analytics, which works with companies in how to best use data about their practices and consumers — using techniques such as predictive analytics, optimization and simulation — to make fact-based decisions that improve productivity, increase profits and create competitive advantages.
Three Kelley faculty of Indian descent helped to create the new Institute for Business Analytics: co-director Vijay Khatri, associate professor of information systems; Ash Soni, associate dean of information technology, professor of operations and decision technologies and the ArcelorMittal Faculty Fellow; and Venkataramanan.
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