While the global economic slowdown has severely affected campus placements at even the crème de la crème of India’s business schools, it appears that institutes offering sector specific or focused MBA programs may choose to bite the bullet in a different way. Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai may have marked a new direction for such institutes by merging individual management programs for retail, capital markets, banking, actuarial sciences, services and global businesses with its flagship MBA program.
The institute is now offering the domain subjects as electives in the second year of the MBA program.
Dr Rajan Saxena, Vice Chancellor – NMIMS University , “Schools will have challenges in offering these specializations as stand-alone programs. We will see more integration of programs with specialization offered in the second year of the MBA program.”
“In general, some colleges are considering the option of closing sector specific MBA programs because of lack of job opportunities,” added Prasanna Venkatesh, Assistant Professor, Indian Business Academy - Bangalore which also offers a retail management course.
The Retailers Association of India (RAI) which represents the interests of organized retailers in India has announced that organized retail in India will grow by 15 percent in the fiscal year ending March 2009, down from the 30 percent growth seen in recent years. "The growth in India's organised retailing will be hit due to weak consumer sentiments and the slowdown in fresh investment. Retailers are quite cautious in opening new stores since property prices are falling and are waiting for more viable deals," said Kumar Rajagopalan, RAI Chief Executive in a recent statement to Economic Times.
Industry sources confirmed the retail sector’s somber mood. Reliance Retail, which operates close to 1,000 stores, has not visited any MBA college this year for recruitments and has in fact laid off large numbers in select divisions. “We had hired 21 MBAs as interns about five months back and have absorbed eight of them as full time employees. This year we do not plan on recruiting from any Indian b-school,” said BVM Rao, HR Head, Shopper’s Stop. Sanjay Jog, head of Future Group's HR, declined to comment on the issue. It is well known that Subhiksha Trading Services has over 1,600 outlets and the majority of these have currently shut down. Further, this one time poster boy of the retail revolution in India has been unable to pay salaries and statutory dues for the past few months.
Interestingly enough, the NMIMS official website’s programs webpage (link: http://nmims.edu/programmes/sbm_ft.htm) still displays information about all the sector specific MBA programs in their entirety and also includes these programs in the list of full time MBA programs present at NMIMS. A visitor to the webpage might well miss a statement written in small sized font present below the list of full time MBA programs: “The MBA Focus Programmes in Actuarial Science, Banking, Capital Markets, Global Business, Retail Management and Services Management are being restructured and merged with the Flagship MBA Programme from 2009-11. All students joining the MBA Programme in 2009 will have the option to take functional specialization elective courses and at the same time have option of domain focus in areas of such as actuarial science, banking, capital markets, global business, retail and services in the second year of the MBA Programme.”
Dr Rajan Saxena said that the primary reason for integration was "general management specialization in functional areas becoming critical for domain specific specialization."
He added, “Given industry changes and challenges, MBA programs will continue to provide general management inputs with focused specializations in various domains. The difference is only in terms of whether institutes offer each focused specialization as a stand-alone program or integrate these specializations with the flagship MBA program.”
NMIMS chose to not issue admission notifications for sector specific or MBA programs for the 2009-11 admissions and after merging these programs with the flagship MBA program has increased student intake for the MBA program from 240 seats to 360 seats and the annual tuition fee from Rs 1.15 lakh to Rs 2.35 lakh.
Mumbai based business schools such as KJ Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research and Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research run retail management programs in association with Pantaloon Retail while Bangalore located b-schools such as Indian Business Academy and Bangalore Management Academy operate such courses as academic partners of the RAI. Prof. Dr. Uday Salunkhe, Group Director, Welingkar Institute of Management said, “The association with Pantaloons is not purely from a placement angle but for providing live learning experiences to students and involving industry professionals in shaping future talent.”
“The RAI is a certificate partner for the retail management course and provides assistance in placements and summer internships in exchange for fee on a per student basis. An institute operating a retail management course may do so without partnering the RAI or a corporate such as Pantaloons but its success would hinge on industry linkages,” said Prasanna Venkatesh, assistant professor at Indian Business Academy, Bangalore.
The retail management program at NMIMS, Mumbai was in partnership with Pantaloons Retail (India) Ltd from 2005 to 2007 but since then the partnership has been terminated. The institute had not associated the retail MBA course with the RAI at any level.
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