XIMB had the honour of becoming the third such B-school in India to be granted this prestigious recognition.

The South Asian Quality Assurance Systems or SAQS was evolved as a system to provide a quality assurance and accreditation framework for business and management schools in South Asia. It uses a set of criteria developed from business and management schools of high national and international standing.

The current inflationary spate which has resulted in double digit rates of inflation, opined Mr Kar, was growth driven. He observed that Indias average annual GDP growth rate of 9.3% over the past 13 quarters had far exceeded expectations. However, persistent supply constraints, primarily in the form of infrastructural bottlenecks, had led to overheating in some sectors which manifested itself in the form of an upward surge in prices. Also, an unprecedented inflow of foreign capital over the past few years further augmented demand and, thereby, exacerbated the situation.

Future of businesses lies in understanding and executing businesses models at the base-of-pyramid. Thats the message from noted marketing thinker Prof V. Kasturi Rangan, the Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing at the Harvard Business School (HBS) who was the chairman of the Marketing Department (1998-2002), and is now the co-chairman of HBSs Social Enterprise Initiative. Prof Rangan was delivering a lecture titled Business models at the base-of-pyramid at New Delhi based Fostiima Business School on July 27.

The course will start on August 23 and will have 170 contact hours spread over a period of four months.

The selection of the course will be on the basis of candidate interviews conducted by faculty members from IIFT as well as officials from the Bombay Stock Exchange. The course has attracted applications from applicants as diverse as IAS officers, chartered accountants and also a couple of financial journalists. About 70% of the applicants have relevant work experience and many of them are already trading actively in the markets.

Prof. Prahalad, while addressing the audience emphasized on acquiring Economic Strength, Technological Vitality and Moral Leadership of the country. He said that India has a potential to lead the world in 2022 with its predicted largest pool of manpower consisting of 200 million college graduates and 500 million trained and skilled workforce.

The summit will see speakers from noted retail experts like William Bissell, Managing Director, Fabindia Ltd; Arvind Singhal, Chairman, Technopak Advisors and Mark Ashman, CEO, Marks & Spencer India. Indias leading management portal MBAUniverse.com is the Official Management Portal of this summit.

The summit will see keynote address by noted retail expert Arvind Singhal, session on learning from Indian & Western retail models, new retail stories and workshops by business consulting firm Milagrow, IBM, KPMG and Cushman & Wakefield.

This partnership will involve student and faculty exchanges and a joint development of Executive Education. Students from triple-accredited Grenoble Ecole de Management will have the opportunity to study for six months at MDI while their Indian counterparts will come experience student life in Grenoble in the heart of the French Alps.

This decision was taken during its 184th BoG meeting held on July 23 at the IIM-Cs Joka campus. According to the proceeding of the board meet, IIM-C will seek certificates from renowned American agency, the Association of Advanced Collegiate School of Business (AASCB) and European Foundation of Management Development (EFMD), which offer the prestigious European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) label.

Who better to answer these questions than the CAT toppers themselves, who are now studying at top B-school!

Indias leading management portal MBAUniverse.com presents its series Road to CAT 2008 which will guide and inspire CAT aspirants at every stage. In this series, begin with a chat with students from top B-schools on their journey, and life at B-school. The B-school students that we interviewed for this series are from institutes like IIM-B, IIM-I, IIM-K, JBIMS, FMS Delhi and IIT Bombays SJMSOM.

The exam will be held on November 23, 2008. IIFT also says that it will accept GMAT score declared after January 1, 2007.

Students can get their application forms by September 3, 2008 from the IIFT and the last date of submission will also be the same.

IIFT entrance exam will be conducted in 20 cities include Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Dehradun, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Jamshedpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur and Visakhapatnam.