Era Business School Hosts Industry – Academia Dialogue

Era Business School (EBS), Dwarka, anchored by Billion Dollar Enterprise Era Group, successfully conducted Industry-Academia dialogue at its grand campus on Thursday, 12th Jan 2012. The Industry-Academia Dialogue had distinguished personalities like Prof. Raj S. Dhankar (Dean, Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University), Prof. Harivansh Chaturvedi (Director-BIMTECH) and Prof. Sanjiv Marwah (Director, Era Business School) on the academia side, and Mr. Rajat Sikka (Head-Talent Acquisitions-North-TCS), Mr. Raj Sharma (VP-HR-Era Group), Mr. Gagan Dewan, Microsoft, Mr. Umesh Sood, GM Finance - Jindal Saw, Pankaj Shukla, Sr. Manager – HR, ONGC, Dr. Jawahar – DGM - Power Grid, Mr. SC Gupta, Chief-HR IFFCO, amongst others, on the corporate side.

The Indian job market in 2011 was adversely affected due to the global economic uncertainty, but emerged out of it rather strong. Experts believe that in the New Year 2012 jobs will continue to be added, albeit at a slower pace. It is estimated that there will be 5 lakh job opportunities in India this year. Era Business School conceptualized this dialogue to address this staggering opportunity by providing right kind of talent, and transform the dreams of aspirating students into reality,. The distinguished gathering shared their thoughts on the changing dynamics of business in which the management graduates need to be equipped to play a much larger role right from their inception in the corporate world.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof. Raj S. Dhankar, Dean, Faculty of Management Studies, highlighted the issue of commercialization of education. He said, “Country needs professional managers to run but with the increase of random business schools and unavailability of good faculties, the quality of professional education is degrading. Industries grow from B-schools but how many alumni’s come back to share their insights about the industry and give back anything to their education system”. He praised Era Business School and complimented Dr. Sanjiv Marwah, on his success of spearheading Era Business School at the top level, in such a short span of time.

Pror. H Chaturvedia, Director BIMTECH, emphasized on the enhanced role the industry needs to play in meeting the requirements of the academia and also provide internship learning opportunities on a boarded scale. He also laid stress on the need for industry professionals to interact with the academia on live and current issues so that the freshness of intellectual inputs can be taken advantage of.

Commenting on the occasion, Dr. G.Jawahar, Chief of HR, Power Grid, raised the issue relating to the need for ethical inputs especially youngsters, likely to take up positions in the corporate world. We need world-class managers who can fit into the corporate world from the very first day. It is not just through classroom learning, but also action-learning. With the economic scenario developing in India, other countries like Germany, Australia, Canada, France & Japan are looking forward to do business here, so there a is huge employment opportunity in 2012”.

Mr. Gagan Dewan from Microsoft mentioned the impact of ethical and professional academia in molding the character the young professionals and cited his personal example of having developed sense of integrity and honesty right at the start of his career. He further added, “The ‘managers in making’ have to shoulder this responsibility and this is possible only through the cooperation and support of our corporate partners. Today’s corporates are operating in a global arena that itself is undergoing major changes because of the globalization of markets and fierce competition”.

Both Mr. Umesh Sood, GM – Finance, Jindal SAW and Mr. Amit Agnihotri, Chairman MBAUnivere, stressed on the need to nurture the spirit of entrepreneurship and role of practicing managers in transferring learning from work place to academic institutions. Mr. Umesh Sood further said that that the new market forces have placed management institutions with the additional responsibility of producing new managerial talent to meet the changing expectations of the corporate houses and the emerging MNCs.

This event will also help in developing course curriculum, pedagogy and academic strategies to make the students industry ready. The event ended with the launch of ‘EraGraph, the newsletter of Era Business School.

IMT Nagpur: The Scene of Placement Activity

“At IMT Nagpur, we believe in equipping the students to meet the challenges that organizations have today. Our faculty and curriculum are geared to guide them in the constantly changing, dynamic and technologically advanced business environment of not only today’s world but of a world that is always evolving, fast forwarding into the future,” says Dr. Rajendra Nargundkar, Director, IMT Nagpur. 


Placements play a crucial role in the way a B-School is perceived. Already in the second month of 2012, IMT Nagpur is a hub of placement activity. More than 40 companies have visited confirmed participation. In fact, 140 students have already been placed in the corporate world, and many of them are multinationals. 


The 2012 salaries average out at Rs. 5.7 lakhs, which is higher than it was in 2011. The highest package offered so far came from Zee Learn at Rs. 9.5 lakhs. The global meltdown is finally showing signs of lifting. 


Dr, Rajendra Nargundkar, Director, IMT Nagpur is delighted with the results of the placements of the 2010-2012 batch so far. “In its seventh year, IMT Nagpur has had an encouraging response from its stakeholders. We have always had a very good academic record, students are exclusively selected through CAT and  a rigorous  interview  process,  and  a  value-add  that  goes  beyond  the  curriculum  into leadership challenges thrown at students at every opportunity. Our faculty can be counted among the best in the country. We have expanded the list of clients for Executive Programs in various areas of management. We conducted four conferences and two industry seminars during the year gone by. We also had 120 guest faculty from the industry speaking to our students. Last year, we were ranked by Business India, Business World, and The Week among India’s top  B-Schools.  We  plan  to  do  an  additional  HR  theme  seminar  and  two recruiters’ meets this year to further our relationship,” he said.


Top companies like Asian Paints, HDFC, CRISIL/IREVANA, SBI Life, Welspun, TCS, Zee Learn, ICICI Lombard, Bajaj Auto Finance, Tata Technologies, Capital IQ, TATA Motors, IDBI, TVS, Bajaj Allianz, Magma Fincorp, Reckitt Benckiser, TCS Eserve, Tata Chemicals, Jindal Power Ltd, IMRB, Aranca, Eveready, Adani, Cheers Interactive, Empower Research and other corporate entities from across varied industries have interviewed and employed a large percentage of IMT Nagpur’s new generation of managers.


“IMT Nagpur has maintained the faith of many organizations over past 6 years and has been named as one of the top B-Schools in India by various prestigious surveys. The institute is committed to excellence and innovation in management learning and developing academic processes which are not only conceptual but analytical and decision oriented,” says Chairperson, Placements at IMT Nagpur, Dr. Harshavardhan Halve. 
IMT Nagpur hopes to continue keeping pace with the requirements of the industry for the benefit of its students and the corporate world.

IMT Nagpur:Mr. Bharat Dabholkar visits IMT Nagpur

With no checks and balances on private enterprise, misleading ads can’t be stopped, advertising guru Bharat Dabholkar told Institute of Management Technology Nagpur students.

“There is no way to stop false advertisements in popular media,” he said. “Government controlled media does have checks and balances, but private enterprises lack that. Also there is no government policy to tackle the problem and all the consumer can do is to complain to the Advertising Standards Council of India, but that too is after the ad has already appeared.”

Noting the unorganized nature of the advertising business and the fact that thousands of advertising agencies operate without any accreditation, Dabholkar said it’s impossible to put a check on advertisements before they reach the public.

“The government has to take this seriously and step in to make a policy, or else nothing can stop misleading ads,” he said.

Dabholkar told the students he believes multinational companies utilize false advertising claims more than their Indian counterparts and outlined two instances when Indian companies refused to compromise their products because then their ad claims would be false.

In the first case, involving the Vicco group’s toothpaste product, he said “I was working on an advertisement for them and I suggested they should add some chemicals for a thicker consistency of the paste, but the owners told me that they use natural products, so the paste has a thinner consistency.

“They refused to add any chemicals since that would falsify their claim to be a company focused on using natural products.”

Dabholkar said of the second case “Even Kurien, the man behind Amul, refused to launch a strawberry-flavoured drink since we could not secure the fruit all year through. Kurien could have used pulp, but then the advertisements would have been technically false so he decided to drop it.”

The Indian economy has really opened up in the last few years with the number of products available growing substantially, said Dabholkar, “So it is bound to happen that the advertisement campaign gets overplayed with the message sought be conveyed also lost in the well.”