This is a first of its kind tie-up in the Indian life insurance industry to offer a specialized management program focusing on the insurance industry. The MoU was signed between Mr. Judhajit Das, Chief Human Resources, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company and Prof. Saibal Chattyopadhyay, Dean, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta today.

Mr Gurucharan Das, Former CEO, Procter & Gamble was the chief guest on the occasion and delivered an inspiring convocation address to the students.

After a traditional Convocation Procession, awards were presented to 24 students for their exceptional performance. 402 students of various Management Programmes such as the Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (full-time and part-time) and Executive Programmes were conferred with certificates for successfully completing their degrees.

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.