Courses in Business administration are in demand. How has Amrita School of Business created a curriculum to meet the needs of the industry?
At Amrita School of Business world class faculty trained at IIMs, IITs, Berkeley, Cornell, Wharton, Florida State, XLRI, Kellogg, ICAI and others inculcate leadership qualities in students. As a member of AACSB, a gold standard for B-Schools the world over, our curriculum is globally benchmarked against the best. Ranked among the Top 50 B-Schools in the country including IIMs, our 2-year MBA programme is fully approved by UGC. This year we saw more than 150 companies visiting us for placements with eligible students being placed with excellent salaries. World-class faculty with rich industry experience and envious academic background inculcate leadership qualities in students. With a steady 100% placements over the past years, it is the Alma Mater of VPs, and senior Executives, in blue chip multinationals like Apple, Google, TCS, Microsoft, Deloitte, Paypal, AOL, Ernest & Young, Jones, Lang LaSalle, to name a few. By gaining access to the school’s strong alumni network of 2000+ worldwide, the students benefit to fulfil their career dreams.
We take inputs from different stakeholders while framing/revising the curriculum. Industry and alumni are regularly consulted for inputs on the curriculum. Some of the courses are taught by industry professionals. We believe in enriching the students’ academic knowledge through interaction with leading corporate executives, industry professionals and entrepreneurs. Under the banner of Colloquia series, numerous interactions are held and the students are exposed to the latest industry practices. In the second year, students focus on the specialization courses, which are developed in close consultation with the industry to ensure their relevance and currency.
Dr. Kishore Gopalakrishna Pillai PhD. Dean - Amrita School of Business, Coimbatore and Bengaluru Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
What are the available specializations in the MBA programme at Amrita School of Business?
Amrita School of Business offers MBA students five major specializations to choose from Information Systems & Business Analytics, Marketing, Operations, Finance, Organizational Behaviour & Human Resources. Interested students may choose dual specialization. Students can also apply for dual-degree M.Sc. International Management at Telecom Ecole De Management (TEM), France. In such cases, students should complete five trimesters at Amrita School of Business and spend two semesters at TEM or a trimester at Buffalo, with the second semester in TEM comprising an internship. During the two-year study, the students undergo programmes like summer internship, business research projects, simulation game, business simulation initiatives, additional certification of IBM, SHRM, Lean Sigma and SAP.
The Department of Management at Bengaluru offers an unique Masters programme in collaboration with one of the top public universities in USA, University at Buffalo, State University of New York (UB). On successful completion, the graduand is conferred an MBA degree by Amrita and MS degree in Management Sciences:
Business Analytics and Systems by University at Buffalo. The course is globally benchmarked and the curriculum is designed to meet contemporary standards and is continuously fine-tuned to keep abreast with the changing global business scenario.
The premier business schools around the world have woken up to the need of including values in the curriculum, in which Amrita has been a pioneer. We believe in imparting education for life along with education for a living.
Have you planned new areas of MBA specialization like Sports and Health Management?
As part of its strategic plans, Amrita School of Business is in the process of designing new programmes/specializations. Health management is an area of interest, given our nationally renowned medical/dental/pharmacy/nursing schools.
How has been the placement record, and can you share the major industries that have absorbed Amrita School of Business students?
Placements at Amrita School of Business have been high. Summer Internship opportunities are provided to the students through the Placement Committee of the campus. The Placement committee is run by the students themselves, providing them an opportunity to interact with the companies during their course of study. After the completion of the internships, students submit an internship report as well as present summer posters highlighting their achievements during the summers. Many a time, students get placement offers during their summers itself. The summer internship also enables the students to engage in live projects, which they can continue even after the internships. The eight weeks of training gives exposure and equips students with skills to develop innovative solutions for real-life applications. The internship programme gives them an opportunity to experience the operational and functional problems pertaining to organizations.
The diversity of roles available to the students and the organic environment to nourish the management skills Amrita offers puts them in their own league. This year has seen a substantial increase in the number of first-time recruiters visiting the campus.
This season saw the continuing stronghold of the institute in the domain of Finance and Marketing with more recruiters visiting the campus. Coveted recruiters like Federal Bank, Deloitte, City Union Bank, IDFC First, TCS, etc., offered roles in this domain to the candidates. Our alumni have created such a great impression in the minds of their employers through hard work, commitment and a rare sense of dedication to the profession that all our past recruiters come again and again to recruit, their offtake increasing with each passing year.
Highlights
Consistent, 100% placements for MBA.
Dream option available for the placed students to go for higher packages/better job profiles.
Highest packages consistently in double figures in lakhs p.a. for the last several years
What are the executive courses currently offered at Amrita School of Business for working professionals? Are there any plans to add to the available courses to the working professionals?
Amrita School of Business has undertaken an extensive continuum of Industry Interface activities like Management Colloquia, Management Development Programmes, Consultancy and Customized In-Company Programmes. We have industry experts coming to Amrita every year not only from India, but also from around the world bringing with them immense valuable insights and information in the form of their experience from the industry they worked in, the culture of their country and the learnings which give our students a competitive edge.
Amrita School of Business has conducted several MDPs recently and is planning a series of Management Development Programmes and Faculty Development Programmes for working professionals and plan to have regular series of such programmes this year. Topics of focus include CSR, Innovation and Digital Marketing.
Do you have international collaboration for your MBA students?
Amrita School of Business offers a Dual degree programme MBA MS with Institut Mines – Te’le’com, Paris. In such cases, students are required to complete five trimesters at Amrita and spend two semesters at IMT, with the second semester comprising of an internship. Our Bengaluru campus offers a dual degree programme with the University of Buffalo. We also offer summer schools with Telecom Ecole De Management, University of Groningen, Deakin University, and the University of New Mexico. As a result, the students graduate with critical skills and experiential learning for entrepreneurship. Investment assistance is also provided through Amrita Technology Business Incubator.
What unique curriculum does Amrita School of Business offer that gives students an edge over MBA graduates from other schools?
We focus on Human Values and Sustainability. Consequently, we produce managers and leaders who are sensitive to the grand challenges facing humanity today. Their actions will be guided by a strong ethical foundation and will promote the UN sustainable development goals. Digital marketing is an area of focus for us. We have cutting edge courses in this area complemented by talks by industry experts. SAP training is another highlight of our programme. Trained by SAP Academic Alliance community, faculty train students in transactions and configurations of different modules of SAP including Materials Management (MM), Financial Accounting and Cost Accounting (FI/CO), Production Planning (PP), Inventory Management/ Warehouse Management (IM/WM), Human Capital Management (HCM), Project Systems (PS), Sales and Distribution (SD) and many more.
Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) trains students in HR Analytics, and Compensation and Benefit programmes. The programme on HR Analytics teaches students to apply analytic processes to the human resource department of the organization. Meanwhile, the compensation and benefits programme enable the participants with the knowledge to build a Rewards strategy aligned with the organization’s business & HR strategy.
How did Amrita School of Business manage its curriculum and syllabus during Covid-19 lockdowns?
We swiftly adapted to the challenges brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic and shifted the classes online. We trained our faculty on online teaching methods, procured necessary equipment to augment online teaching, and had several meetings to exchange information on best practices. Access to all the electronic materials in the library including online databases was provided to the students through a virtual private network. Online exams were conducted by maintaining the sanctity of exams using online proctoring tools. Through these measures, Amrita School of Business was able to maintain the high quality in our programme in the online mode too.
We have also conducted sessions for the students to share some best practices to maintain their health and to reduce the strain on the eyes that can happen due to the long exposure to computer screens in the online mode that was forced on all of us due to the pandemic. We initially provided e-books to our students and when the situation permitted, we shipped hardcopy books to the students to their respective homes so that strain on the eyes due to too much screen time is reduced to the extent possible.
To boost our capacity and provide support to students, we added faculty in the last 2 years. We also subscribed to additional databases as well as Harvard cases and simulations to enhance learning.
What are the new initiatives that Amrita School of Business plans in the next few years?
Amrita School of Business has ambitious plans for the next few years. In order to attract talented students, we have instituted a scholarship programme. We are in the process of expanding the scholarship programme to make it more attractive for talented students to study with us. The school has had much success in attracting high quality faculty in the past couple of years, but is scouting for further talent to enhance capacity. While our Coimbatore campus gained the coveted AACSB Accreditation in 2019, we are in the process of getting our other campuses too accredited by AACSB.
We are in the process of deepening our relationship with the industry to enhance placement prospects for our students. ASB is also planning new centres of excellence – Centre for Analytics, Centre for AI & Digital Technologies and the Centre for Innovation. It is expected that these centres will act as nodal agencies to foster the intellectual environment and also provide unique learning experiences and opportunities for MBA students. Finally, ASB is planning to launch new programmes in collaboration with globally leading Universities including inter-disciplinary programmes. Health Management is an area of immediate interest.
Website: amrita.edu/mba
