SIMS alumni pool in to aid future batches

PUNE, June 21: Ranked among the top ten management institutes in the country with blue chip companies offering plum jobs to its students, th...

PUNE, June 21: Ranked among the top ten management institutes in the country with blue chip companies offering plum jobs to its students, the five-year old Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies SIMS for defence personnel and dependents is geared to raise a corpus of Rs 50 crores to subsidise their education. The only hitch for this lack of campus8217; institute is that the money pouring in the fund is used to buy more computers instead!

A former SIMS student and now the young Director of the institute Prof Ranjeet Mudholkar, told media persons on Sunday that nearly 83 recruiters from all over the country have offered 121 jobs as on February 15 this year. The institute, which completed five years and is currently engaged in the induction of the new batch this year, has an exemplary track record of cent per cent placements for its 1993-95, 1994-96 and 1995-97 batches.

SIMS was established in 1993 under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence, offering management education to defence personnel and their dependents. SIMS conducts three full-time, two part-time and two sponsored courses with a total strength of 350 students, besides a correspondence course which has over 4000 students on its rolls.

The institute however is handicapped due to the lack of a permanent campus and infrastructure for which it has to rely on temporary or hired locations. While a plot of land of five acres has been earmarked at Aundh and which is accepted by the HQ Pune Sub Area/HQ Southern Command is now caught up in red tape at the Ministry of Defence, Mudholkar said, quickly adding that things were moving now.8217;

The SIMS army which plans to raise a corpus of Rs 50 crores to subsidise education for the wards of armed forces personnel and create SIMS clubs with infrastructure in major cities has former students contributing their second month8217;s salary. quot;Initially it was voluntary, but now it is a tacit rule,quot; Mudholkar quips while stressing that so far only a couple of lakhs had been collected, out of which some amount has been utilised for purchasing computers.

Aiming to achieve a synergistic union of the defence forces and the industrialised world through management education, the SIMS selection process is conceived and controlled by the senior students. quot;In fact 40 per cent of the management of the institute is done by our students,quot; Mudholkar stressed adding that every candidate undergoes at least one Group Discussion and faces three interview panels.

Senior managers from James Martin and Company, Coopers and Lybrand, Essar Cellphone, Price Waterhouse, Escorts Ltd, Telco, Rallie India and other corporate firms are participating in the selecting 100 students for the Post Graduate Diploma in Management Dual specialisation and another 50 for PGDM Personnel Management and Human Resource Development.