The courses have been launched to address the Retail industrys consistent demand for skilled professionals. According to a recent study, the Retail market is set to double in 3 years to $30 billion; with organised retail occupying 30% of the retail market size in the next 10 years. With 2 million jobs expected to be created by 2010, the industry needs a workforce that is market-ready, skilled and groomed.

Mr. Seshan shall be teaching a course on Leadership at Great Lakes called Leadership, Influence and Managing power from February.

Close on the heels of IIM-A, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta announced that their PGPEX participants are being lapped up by blue chip companies. Levis, PWC and Accenture were among the companies that made 60 offers, including overseas assignments at $200,000 a year, to the first batch of IIM Calcuttas PGPEX programme. Six students accepted international offers that averaged $121,000, while domestic assignments, fetching as high as INR 43 Lakh, averaged INR 20 Lakh. The PGPEX programme completed its placement process in December 2007.

The Centre, which will be located at the Sad Business School at the University of Oxford, will address major business issues affecting India, through collaborative research between academics in Oxford, India and elsewhere.
In announcing this initiative, Dr John Hood, said: The primary objective of this research centre is to learn from Indias business success. A clear understanding of the issues faced by India and their innovative solutions, as India transitions from poverty to prosperity, will form a guide to future generations of countries attempting similar transitions.

CII has signed a pact with UKSkills focusing on skills development in India, on the occasion of the visit of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown on 20 January.

Accenture, Microsoft, IBM (Singapore and India), Morgan Stanley, Unilever and Intel Capital were some of the companies that offered projects to PGPX students. According to IIM-A, this year PGPX students did several high value and high impact projects. Sponsoring companies have already put recommendations made by PGPX students into execution mode.

According to leading education domain companies Career Launcher, which had kicked off its ambitious edutainment event Tycoons on January 10, more than 5,000 youth have registered for the contest on Tycoons website. Whats more, Tycoons have also signed on Reebok as a Lifestyle Partner.

Informs Career Launcher, As on January 18, we have more than 5,000 registrations on Tycoons website and more than 6,000 tests have been taken by the users. In all, there have been more that more than 20,000 visitors on the website.

The 30 students from Harvard were on an immersion trip to India to meet top political and business leaders of the country. In Bangalore they visited Infosys, Biocon and UB and met with top executives there. As a part of this trip, they visited the IIM-B campus and spent time discussing various issues regarding Indian business and the economy and interacting with the faculty and students.

The students from Yale were on a study tour of India as well and visited the campus to interact with the students and setup an exchange program between the two universities.

The Award instituted by Avaya GlobalConnect (AGC), a leading player in converged communication solution space, aims at honouring companies that have fared exceedingly well in their customer responsive policies and practices. The Award methodology has been designed by Professor M. Janakiraman of IIM, Lucknow. Avaya GlobalConnect, in partnership with The Economic Times, launched the Customer Responsiveness Award in 2005.

While the experiences they describe all vary widely, theres one constant theme that seems to run through most, if not all of them stress.