The Base of the Pyramid - ISB Focus in Financial Times

The sixth installment of the FT Business School series of online executive education courses - conducted in partnership with leading business schools - featured five professors from the ISB. To see Professors Mudit Kapoor, Ravi Bapna, Shamika Ravi, Reuben Abraham and Harish Bijoor speak on topics such as marketing, microfinance and mobile telephony in India., go to: http://www.ft.com/businesseducation/isb

The FT also recently carried two articles focusing on the ISB – an interview with Dean M R Rao and a profile of the school. An article profiling management students across the country also carried an interview with Javier Rosales an exchange student from the Judge School of Business, Cambridge, UK.

Admissions Alum Referral Programme

The Admissions Office would like to thank all ISB alumni for your continuing support in our admissions process. A key imperative now is to ensure the quality and consistency of the applicant pool. In this regard, we believe that each one of you has a valuable role to play as validators and demonstrators of the ISB model.
We invite you to encourage at least one potential MBA student with leadership potential to apply to the ISB. The second admission deadline is coming up on November 15, though international passport holders can apply through the rolling process till January 31, 2008.
Also, if you know an outstanding candidate, who had already applied and you would like to further recommend, please email Sanjay Singh, Assistant Director Admissions at sanjay_singh@isb.edu, giving their name along with your insight comments, for use by us during the evaluation process. Since you all know the diversity fit profiles that we look for, we would derive the advantage of a validated pool of applicants to select from.
 

New faculty at the ISB




Professor Nishtha Langer has joined the ISB as an Assistant Professor. A PhD and MS in Information Systems from the Tepper School of School of Business, CMU, her research interests include information economics and economics of external IT assets





Professor Vinayak Deshpande an Associate Professor at the Krannert School of Management, Purdue University also arrived on campus as a Visiting Scholar. He is visiting ISB till December 2007.

Both Professor Langer’s and Professor Deshpande’s profiles can be viewed in the faculty directory at: http://www.isb.edu/Faculty


ISB Increases Scholarships by 55% for the Incoming Class

The Indian School of Business (ISB) has announced a range of scholarships for a total amount of Rs 3.3 crores. The scholarships will be available for all the students who will be selected for the new Class of 2009.
The total scholarship amount represents a significant 55% increase over the scholarships offered to the previous Class.

The scholarships include funding from the ISB as well as from private companies who have come forward to support excellence in education. 60% of the scholarships will be awarded by the ISB while the remaining 40% will be awarded by private companies. Companies such as Citigroup, Novartis, Sierra Atlantic, Ambit Finance, and others, will award scholarships to the ISB students.

The scholarships are both merit and need based and will be given to outstanding students, selected on the basis of exceptional academic and professional performance, as well as personal qualities such as leadership, integrity, and community service. In an attempt to attract students from various professional, ethnic, and gender backgrounds, several scholarships will be awarded to students who come from small towns in India, women students, and international students.
 

ISB Students win Micro Insurance Academy contest 

In July, the Micro Insurance Academy (MIA) launched an innovation contest on “explaining health insurance.” The purpose behind inviting participants to brainstorm was to encourage creative thinking around effectively communicating the values proposition of insurance for the poor.

Dr Kiran M Shete and Gajanan Pujari used the popular Bollywood characters of Munnabhai and Circuit in a skit to get the attention of the audience and inform them about health insurance. The characters then anchor a game for the audience, by which illness is explained to them as something no one can predict, but must always be in readiness for. The village folk are made to understand that by buying insurance, one is not only always prepared to face a calamity, but is also saving household income from going wasted in the long run. The proposal takes the cake for being simple, precise and creative.
The team was awarded a prize of Euro 1000. Congratulations Kiran and Gajanan!


3 ISB teams in Cognizant Boardroom Contest 2007

Three student teams from the ISB have been shortlisted for Phase-3 of Cognizant’s “Boardroom - Smart Business Plan Contest 2007”.

This contest is a unique opportunity to budding management students across B-schools to get creative, propose new business avenues for Cognizant, and draw up a comprehensive business plan on what Cognizant’s next move should be. This could involve anything from starting a new development center to venturing into a new geography, new service vertical or horizontal, or a new service offering.

Cognizant will seriously consider incubating the winning idea within the organization by setting up a core team. The winning team will have the option of being a part of this initiative.


ISB Insight – September 2007 issue now online

The September 2007 issue of the ISBinsight is now online at http://www.isb.edu/isbinsight/Insight_Sep07/contents.html This issue focuses on the changing dynamics of marketing in a world of new media choices. ISBinsight bring to you the views of our faculty experts - all top-notch researchers and academicians from some of the leading B-schools around the world.

Also featured is an exclusive interview with Marshall Goldsmith, ranked one of the top ten executive educators by the Wall Street Journal, and a world authority in executive coaching, who visited the ISB to conduct an Executive Coaching Programme for CEO Coach aspirants.