Five post-graduate programme (PGP) students of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) have set up a Private Equity (PE) and Venture Capital (VC) club to help students get hands-on experience by involving PE/VC players from India and abroad. Unlike finance clubs run by most B-schools in the country, this club exclusively focuses on PE and VC funding.

The lack of opportunities and experience in the PE and VC space led five students to set up the club called ‘Leverage’. With around 50 students interested in being members, the club will be a forum for students interested in all aspects of private equity and venture capital.

“We came up with an initial skeletal structure of the PE club by looking at institutes like Harvard and others from the Ivy League. But the end product has been entirely our idea of how a PE club should be. Although we prefer to call it an interest group for the time being, we plan to run a full-fledged club with more activities soon,” says Anirudh Singh, a member of the club.

“PE as an industry has boomed in India and we plan to invite speakers to the campus, hold conclaves, workshops and other events to provide a platform for the students and corporates to interact. Also, we are looking forward to hold intra-institute events, where the students can write an investment proposal and a panel of faculty members can judge them.

We have no restrictions when it comes to corporates as we would be involving both top- and middle-level players to encourage more and more activities in the field of PE and VC,” says Gagandeep Singh, another member of the club.

As part of formalising the club, the students are holding the first intra-institute event called the ‘Zen of Investing’, where the club plans to invite alumni working in the area of private equity, besides involving the faculty and students for the activity.

The club also has plans to tie-up with Post-Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGPX) students to getter a better perspective of private equity. “The PGPX students would be able to share their experiences about private equity and with their support, we plan to involve ourselves with the corporates in a deeper way through various activities, including projects and case workshops,” adds Anirudh Singh.

The club is in talks with a few corporates, who have shown interest in sponsoring the club.

“We are considering more options for funding besides the institute and the corporates we are in talks with. Currently, we are in the stage of gauging the responses from the people about the club,” says Anirudh Singh, before adding, “Although we have started out PE and VC, we may consider branching out to other areas like micro finance later.”

More : business-standard.com

An innovation expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will be visiting the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), in November to promote the importance of user-based innovations in creating successful companies.

“India and Indians residing worldwide have a wonderful record as innovators and entrepreneurs. I believe users tend to be the real developers of many important products. Recently, research by my colleagues has shown that many new companies are started by users who become entrepreneurs. Learning about how user innovations foster the creation of successful new companies will be very useful information for IIM students and others in India,” says Eric von Hippel, professor and head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management and professor of Engineering Systems at MIT.

It will be his first trip to India, which he also intends to use “to forge closer contacts with my colleagues at IIM-A, who have very similar research interests”.

The lecture is part of a two-week long ‘Inventors of India’ workshop by the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM-A. About 70 inventors and innovators of all ages and technical background are expected to be present at the event. Premier institutes could also be called to participate at the workshop.

“Eric will participate and may give the inaugural address at the workshop. In addition, he will interact with the faculty and students and explore possibilities of collaborative research. Apart from visiting some grassroot innovators, he will interact with our incubatee companies as well. Several things are being planned and we are quite excited about his visit. Also, we may ask institutes like National Institute of Design (NID) and Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA), to pitch in,” says Rakesh Basant, chairman of CIIE and a professor at IIM-A.

An expert in Principle of Developing Economics, Eric has made two of his books available openly on his website at no cost to the reader: Democratising Innovation, published in 2005 by the MIT Press, and Sources of Innovation, published in 1988 by Oxford University Press. Leading companies in the world have used practical methods based on his research.

Hippel is also expected to meet grassroot innovators at SRISTI, an NGO founded by Anil Gupta, a professor at IIM-A. Incidentally, Gupta too would be lecturing at MIT as part of the Amy Smith’s International design and development course on July 16-17.

More : business-standard.com

The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), in an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, has said that the unilateral decision of the Union ministry of human resources development regarding fees to be charged by IIMs does not seem to be a step in the right direction.

The affidavit, filed after the apex court served notices to the six IIMs on April 8, asking them to clarify their stand on the fee-cut issue, puts on record the IIM-A’s willingness to sort out the issue through a process of dialogue.

“We have not gone to the court proactively. The affidavit places our views on record in answer to the notice and not filing it would have limited our options. We are, however, not a party to the PIL,” said a source in the IIM-A.

The affidavit has three components - the Position Paper prepared by the faculty, the resolutions passed by the IIM-A Society and the Board of Governors recently, and the fact that the institute is in a process of dialogue with the ministry.

Dons feel that the affidavit clarifying the institute’s willingness for a dialogue will create an atmosphere that will help the process initiated by chairman NR Narayanamurthy during the board meeting here on April 3.

The affidavit said the fee-reduction order has to be seen not in isolation, but in the larger context of many other decisions by the ministry that threatened the autonomy of the institute.

It has also said that the notification on fee reduction “violates the time-honoured process of the fee being decided by the Board of Governors and that it is not necessary to reduce fees to make management education more affordable to the less well-to-do sections of the society.”

Meanwhile, the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta faculty council filed an application before the Supreme Court, praying for an order impleading it as a respondent in the fee-cut case already pending before the apex court.

Januar 17 - Kolkata, Indian - International Accreditation zu sein scheint das Stichwort zwischen mehreren Top-B-indischen Schulen. IIM (Ahmedabad), XLRI, Jamshedpur, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai sind und wie die Getriebe bis zum Benchmark sich gegen die Besten der Welt.

Schritt Dieser wird nicht nur weitere Institute der “globalen Ambitionen ausländische und Studenten, sondern wird auch dazu beitragen, binden besser sie mit ihren bekannten internationalen Partnern für das von Anbieten gemeinsamen Programmen von und die Durchführung Studentenaustausch.

In jüngster Zeit IIM-A Bekanntgabe ihrer Entscheidung beantragen die begehrten EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) Akkreditierung

GThe students prefer to study the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), a ranking of the list of Business Schools in India, outdoing IIM, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

This is because IIM-B-initiatives to improve the quality of education, according to a survey of the Economic Times

February 11 - Ahmedabad, India - India seems to have stumbled on a new mantra to increase their international relations - Training diplomacy. And the dream of travel east of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A), the quasi-ambassador of India in the field of education to more than a dozen countries in Asia, Africa , Asia and Western Europe.

The Union Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Institute has a list of countries where the IIM-A for the implementation of plans roadshows for its Post-Graduate new program in the areas of management for executives PGPX, which starts in June next year.

At an early meeting of IIM-A officials and foreign ministers Shyam Sharan in New Delhi last month, it would have, according to reports in Fanshop donations to these countries and candidates to the rope for the program “, an effort to help India to strengthen diplomatic relations with these countries. ”

The year of a program aimed at executives selected by the GMAT and personal interviews, a dose of 50 to 70 students, including 25 percent of foreign participants are expected during the first year. The process to achieve in March, when the authorisation procedure for the course begins.

The list includes some of the neighbouring countries of India - Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka - and in Indonesia, Malaysia and France and a number of countries in West Asia and Africa.

“There is throughout the world focuses on vocational training Post-Graduate character, and the MEA, seeks to strengthen strategic alliances with these countries indicate that they thought IIM-A as a trademark. The program could be a starting point to begin the long term - in the field of education alliances. to the Institute, it is a big step towards our plans to go international, “says an IIM-A Don.

“The Institute is currently in advanced discussions with MSAs,” says an IIM-A source.