The MBA in India is bound to become more international. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the organisation that owns the GMAT exam, has teamed up with nine leading Indian B-schools to promote India as an attractive MBA destination for international professionals.

The partners aim at convincing more foreign students to join India-based MBA programmes. The campaign targets 27 countries, including Germany, France and several countries in Asia and Africa, Economic Times reported, citing GMAC president Sangeet Chowfla.

The council has a ‘Study in India’ link on its official Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) exam website, www.mba.com, which international students looking to pursue business management courses frequent. The link leads to the www.studyinindiamba.com website, which provides students with information about the country and specific B-schools. Potential candidates can learn about the local climate and cuisine, student housing, working in India, campus life, and course duration, among others.

The partners have also interviewed and created video blogs of foreign and domestic students talking about their educational and social experiences.

 

GMAC’s partners include the Indian Institutes of Management in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Indore — besides Indian School of Business (ISB), SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM), IMT Ghaziabad, and Xavier University Bhubaneswar (XUB). 

The initiative is in line with the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s directive to rebuild India’s attractiveness as a study destination for higher education in Africa, Middle East, and South and East Asia. 

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Chowfla, the GMAC president, said India is not considered as a study destination on the same lines as western countries or even Singapore, Hong Kong, and increasingly Shanghai are. Now, GMAC is keen to change that. 

This is a first-of-its-kind programme that US-based GMAC has implemented in the world. The council owns and administrates the GMAT, a standardised test specifically designed for graduate business and management programmes. It has hundreds of member schools from several countries including Australia, the UK, China, France, and India. 

 

Chowfla said that post-Brexit and the US elections, students from all over the world have been increasingly saying they need to look at alternatives to the UK and US to do their MBA. 

“Quality business schools have developed across the world now,” he said. “If you look at the global rankings from 20 years ago, it was a mix of US and UK schools. Today, the list includes schools from all over the world.” 

India boasts four business schools in the 2017 Financial Times Global MBA Ranking placing the country right after the US (51 schools), UK (13 schools) and China (5 schools) among the total of 19 countries that made it in the ranking. 

According to Chowfla, one of the main reasons for the council to market India as a destination for business education is the growing relevance of India to other countries and multinational companies. 

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India’s industrial structure is relevant to many countries in the emerging world as there are several business courses available in the country, he told Economic Times. “Yes, potential students can go to the US and learn things like derivative finance. But those aren’t even available in their own country. We (India) are much more relevant from that point of view,” Chowfla said. 

Chowfla said the initiative will not just benefit international students aspiring to study here, but also domestic MBA students. “If you think about business education to other education etc., you learn more from each other than you learn from professors,” he said. “Getting the right mix of students including foreign students is good. It’s not just about getting foreign students into India as a way to earn additional revenues, but the quality of education for Indian students becomes dramatically better when they study with foreign students.” 

Source: Economic Times