Developing Responsible Leaders

What is the current thrust area at the institution and what have been some of the significant changes in terms of infrastructure, faculty recruitment and curriculum revamp?
BIMTECH is a leading niche B-school which is driven by its vision of ‘developing responsible leaders with an entrepreneurial mindset and striving for sustainability’. Our current thrust area is to position our institute as a leading research and teaching institution in management discipline.

Our name includes technology, which nudges us to adopt technology in various spheres of our activities on a continuous basis. This includes curriculum redesign, adding technology and skill oriented courses such as Emerging Technology, Business Transformation, Industry 4.0, amongst many others.

We are well aware that technology is a major disruptor as well as enabler for all businesses. Accordingly, our students, who are going to be the future managers, need to be ingrained with a solid technology foundation and its business applications so that they can be productive from day one. 

In the last three years, we have significantly upgraded infrastructure by adding a complete new floor to our academic block, building two new modern computer labs and enhancing IT facilities in all our offices, classrooms and support infrastructure.

Given the changing requirements of business, we have recruited faculty with requisite skills and our curriculum has been recalibrated with the needs of the industry. This includes several value added certifications offered by leading tech and consulting companies like Salesforce.com, AWS, KPMG, Grant Thornton, Swiss Re and many others.

How is NEP being rolled out on the campus?
We are studying the New Education Policy (NEP) very carefully as well as meticulously to adopt some of the options and initiatives provided. Following directions given by NEP 2020, we have started an online PGDM during the pandemic years of 2020-21, and 30 per cent of our online learners are women. We are very happy to share that this online PGDM has more than 950 students who come from diverse strata of our society, small towns and even from foreign countries. All these students have missed the higher education due to personal and financial reasons but are now able to get the same quality of BIMTECH teaching in a flexible and affordable manner using technology and tools. 

To fulfil the mandate of NEP 2020, we are also giving serious thought to introducing multidisciplinary courses and also adding undergraduate courses in management.

How will artificial intelligence (AI) impact management education and what is your institute's approach to disruptive technologies?
The impact of AI can be considered at two levels. The first one being its adoption in the back office function such as admission, examination processing, content creation, etc. In this area, we are increasingly adopting AI to bring efficiency, innovativeness and responsiveness to our students. The second area of AI impact is on teaching/learning. Our professors are deeply researching and understanding use and deployment of AI and in teaching/learning. We are adopting an innovative yet cautious approach to adopt this technology in an ethical and responsible manner.

What are the changing expectations of the corporate world and industry and how are you meeting those expectations?
The corporate world expects us to produce managers who are industry ready from day one. In order to meet this expectation, we review our curriculum and enhance it to meet current industry expectations. As mentioned above, several skill-building courses, use of cutting-edge technology labs and live projects of social and entrepreneurial nature are being given to our students.

What are the changing aspirations of students? What experience do they want while at B-school and how are you meeting those aspirations?  
The aspirations of our students are constantly changing. They are more tech-savvy, aspirational, highly competitive and much focused to achieve their goals in their life.  Our job as a B-school academician is to give wings to their aspirations by creating necessary conditions for learning. By empowering them to choose suitable specialisations, connecting them with their dream companies through internship programmes and mentoring them with a unique blend of professors and CXOs. 

What are the biggest challenges before B-schools today and what solutions would you suggest?  
Our biggest challenge is to meet the demands of Industry 5.0 and NEP 2020. To meet these challenges, we need to work very fast in adopting new technologies and to groom our students with cutting-edge courses needed by the industry. In coming years, we will also be required to expand our soft and hard infrastructure for adding new programmes. But we are confident of meeting these challenges with the support of our stakeholders.