Foundation stone laid for Rs 500 cr management school in Hyderabad

The ISB, conceived and sponsored by top business houses in the country, will come up on a sprawling campus of 250 acre at Manikonda village, 20 km from the heart of the city. It will start functioning from the middle of 2001, with an initial student intake of 120, which will go up to 480 in the next four years.

Addressing a small gathering, most of them members of the governing board, Rangarajan said that institutions of higher learning like the ISB had an important role in enlarging the knowledge accumulation to meet the challenges of the next millennium.

Expressing happiness over the setting up of ISB in Hyderabad, he hoped that the institute would impart skills to managers to run economies and companies that were faced with "new technologies" and "unknown future," besides shaping the management thought in the context of growing societal needs.

Naidu said that the setting up of ISB would make Hyderabad the knowledge capital of the country. Expressing confidence that ISB would become a major management institution in the entire Asia, he said that the institute would produce top class managers who can deal with new challenges.

Referring to the skepticism expressed by certain quarters on the project, the chief minister said: "At this moment, my mind goes back to the day when a group of key industrialists met me here in last August. We shared a dream of setting up a world class business school. It has come true now".

Naidu thanked Anil Ambani, Adi Godrej, Rahul Bajaj and Yogesh C Deveshwar, for selecting Hyderabad for the prestigious management school. With this, Hyderabad had become a centre for institutions of higher learning in the fields of information technology, management and bio-technology.

Welcoming the gathering, ISB chairman Rajat Gupta said that two premier management institutions- Kellog Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University and Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, would be joining the faculty of ISB. CEO Pramath Sinha made a presentation on ISB.

Addressing a media conference later, Rahul Bajaj said that it would not be possible to implement reservations to SC and STs in ISB. "We are not going to entertain any other criterion in admissions other than merit. We want only merit and nothing else," he emphatically said.

Replying to questions, Rajat Gupta said that the total cost of the project was about 130 million US dollars (about Rs 520 crore) and about 50 million dollars would be invested in the first phase. Of this, 30 to 35 million had been raised through contributions from the board members, he explained.

Asked whether there was need for another business school when the IIMs were doing well, Kellog school dean Donald Jacobs said the there was an excess demand for managers in Indian as well as international market. "IIMs are no doubt strong, but there is vast scope for ISB," Bajaj remarked.

Both Gupta and Bajaj said that ISB was likely to charge a fee of about Rs five to six lakh from each student for a one year post-graduation course, as against the estimated Rs 30 to 35 lakh charged by some top US management schools like Harvard.

Making it clear that ISB was a non-profit organisation, Gupta said that efforts would be made to collect donations from more industrial houses to meet its future requirement. Anil Ambani said that about 70 to 75 per cent of the students are expected to be from India and the rest from abroad.