Gearing Up For A New India

The ongoing pandemic means that everyone must pivot online to get things done, and NITIE is no exception. We shifted all our academic and administrative activities online to ensure the safety of students and educators. We had to move entirely online from our Admissions to classes and even the convocation. Our comprehensive admission process for the full-time courses aims at finding high-performing candidates with a curious mindset. We altered the process to suit the online setting without compromising on the evaluation of the candidate. For our classes, we implemented a blended plan: Online courses, especially in the domain of digitisation, supply chain management, supply chain analytics, marketing analytics, along with regular online classes subjects with an enhanced focus on case studies. We did this to augment the skill set of our students as disruptive innovations like Blockchain IoT, Robotics, and Automation need to be discussed and debated to extract their true potential in the future.  

The Virtual Classroom 

Our Full-time courses have been shifted to the virtual mode; thus, we have included more case studies and interactive quizzes in our regular classes. This has made the virtual classroom a lucrative place for students to learn multifaceted management concepts from our world-class educators. We have shifted our examinations online as well, this required us to redesign our testing methodology and evaluation pattern to gauge the performance of our students. This has been a learning curve for all of us and implementing the virtual classroom is an ongoing process. We learn just as much as we impart our courses, constantly improving from the real-time feedback we receive. We aim at delivering world-class education to executives currently working at leading organisations. To that end, we completed the 3 Global Online Certification Courses viz. supply chain digitisation and management, business and operations analytics, and end-to-end supply chain transformation through digitisation, in association with Prof. David Simchi-Levi (MIT, USA). A total of 3000 individuals from 350+ prestigious national and international organisations from 17 countries have participated proactively in the course.  Executives from Amazon, P&G, GE, Asian Paints, Micron, Honeywell, PWC, and Deloitte joined this course. NITIE completed another Global Online Certification Course on 'Supply Chain Operations and Disruptions Management: A Way Forward.  

Faculty Development Programmes (FDPs) 

Our academicians go through FDPs that are meticulously planned to bridge the gap in quality research and teaching skills required in innovative management education in India. We involve renowned faculty and experts from international and national institutions to hone our teaching and research skills. This helps us absorb new ideas and exchange our learning with them as well; it is truly a symbiotic relationship that we have cultivated among management academia here at NITIE. We keep our academicians in touch with the latest trends and events in Business, Economics, and Governance through various case study workshops organised with fellow B-schools and Corporate houses. We get to dip into the near-infinite body of research and upgrade our academicians through this. Teaching approaches will undoubtedly develop if teachers prefer to perform more research and analysis on the topic. More commonly known as research-oriented teaching, educators seek knowledge and information outside the textbook to provide students with current and new information about a subject. NITIE also provides the educators with a chance to learn new skills through a plethora of courses available of Coursera and LinkedIn Learning. These platforms have proved their mettle in today's age by bridging the gap between world-class skills and willing learners. Our Educators have made great use of these online courses to add skills to their armoury. 

Connecting With Industry & Policymakers  

These connections stem from faculty consulting and customised training with organisations; they flow from alumni participation in institute activities, industry sponsorship of research activities and Professorial Chairs at the Institute and elsewhere, and the Institute's management development programmes. Our organisational structure, procedures, and processes are geared to make it easier for members to interact with external stakeholders. External stakeholders are invited to participate in visioning, strategy development, knowledge generation, knowledge usage, knowledge distribution, admissions, placement, and procuring financial and other resources as part of the institutional plan.   

During the pandemic, 113 companies visited our campus, and around 28 per cent of the class of 2022 received pre-placement offers (PPOs). We also completed the Summer Internship Process swiftly via the online mode. Businesses across the FMCG sector, finance, ecommerce, IT, logistics, manufacturing, and pharma came to NITIE. 

Pivoting Online 

All our full-time courses are being instructed via the virtual model. Online and digital education is given considerable attention in the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. This would open the way for edtech to become more integrated into India's education system, allowing for new and more cost-effective ways to operate educational programs, distribute content, and consume it. Learning in the future may rely less on physical infrastructure and more on digitalisation, allowing for greater affordability and equal access to high-quality education. Technology in education is also projected to progressively shift the focus away from the grade-based input-output education system and toward developing an independent system that works in tandem with traditional learning methods, broadening the range of possibilities for students.  

Edtech companies will play a significant role in the country's development as they continue to evolve by overcoming difficulties in the traditional Indian education system. The broad adoption of technology solutions over the next decade will ensure that all ambitious learners have an equal learning opportunity and can build a better future for themselves. Although the rest of the top 100 universities ranked in the NIRF can deliver 100 per cent of their courses online, the same cannot be said about the other universities. This is a huge opportunity for EdTechs to work alongside established universities in developing interactive curriculum for the virtual model. Edtechs could also help management students develop a deeper understanding of Data Analytics and the tools required in the process. This would be a huge boost for future managers as a business are centring all their core processes based on data gathered from them.  

Competing on a Global Platform 

NITIE is dedicated to acting as a driving force of transformative education and industry-inspired research to help Indian businesses attain a global presence. To make that possible, we would leverage our strength in practical solutions to problems faced by the industry. We would do this by maintaining a robust pedagogical culture to train our students in cross-functional aspects apart from Supply Chain and Operations. Our goal is to make our students apply all the modern tools of Management and Engineering, and Analytics to shine bright in their careers.  

To assist Businesses, we aim to collaborate and build better strategies to improve their profitability and increase customer base to grow to their full potential. We plan to Sign MoUs with businesses across industries to assist them in building a better world. We also plan to invite global business leaders, students, and faculty to our institute to gather their valuable insights and expand our minds in the process.  So to sum it up, a relentless focus on the needs of the Indian industry, robust collaboration with academia and businesses, and an expanding international presence would be the three goals for the growth of NITIE.   

Apart from these broader goals, we aspire to become one of the best B-schools globally and transform the way the international audience perceives Indian education. To that end, we are working to diversify our presence not just as a hub for supply chain managers but for financial managers, business consultants and economists.  

Long-awaited Structural Reforms 

The present Covid 19 dilemma demonstrates that long-awaited structural reforms to turn logistics into a formal, streamlined industry are more important than ever. Consumers all across the world, and notably in India, have been buying online in greater numbers since the pandemic began, particularly for food. Demand for online grocery shopping platforms in India increased by up to 50 per cent last year. Companies are frantically trying to strengthen their supply chains. Companies should consider decreasing their product mix, assigning more inventory to important commodities, and using processes to eliminate human involvement in the warehousing function. Key milestones in the transportation function include expanding the use of efficient multi-modal transportation.  

Businesses in the IT and related sectors are expected to become more flexible, with workflows becoming more transparent, decentralised, and less hierarchical. The recent success of ecommerce startups and upcoming Unicorns are a testament to the booming technology sector of India. The dawn of digital would also help transform the farming and dairy sector. Since the beginning of the Covid 19 crisis, it has impacted practically every commercial operation in India, in every sector and every region. Logistics has been particularly heavily hit, as only a few tiny industries can exist without it. The pace of recovery was unknown even before the second wave of the disease began in the spring of 2021. Estimating demand, allocating capacity, and distributing products across industries and regions will continue to be significant tasks in the foreseeable future.