FAST FACTS
Location: Electronics City, Bangalore
CEO: Swaminathan Krishnan
Approval/Accreditation: AICTE approved & NBA accredited
Flagship programme: PGDM
Student intake: 120
Fees (full course): Rs. 450,000
Board & lodging (two years): Rs. 72,000
Admission test cut-offs: CAT- 85, MAT - 550, GMAT - 500
Full-time faculty: 32 (Professors -12, Asst Professors - 11, Lecturers - 9)
Faculty with industry experience (over 10 years): 17
Average placement salary: Rs. 3.50 lakhs
Top recruiters: American Express, Britannia Industries, Deustche Bank, Ernst & Young, Unilever
International Conference: Doing Business in India,
Student Activities: Jubilant (national collegiate cultural festival), Panorama (management festival), NEN (entrepreneurship sessions), CSR
(along with NGO Jangraha)
Web site: www.ifimbschool.com
Other programmes: Executive Programme in Capital Markets - 9 months, PGDM-IB/ PGDM-Finance (both of two years duration)
LOCATED opposite the Infosys campus, IFIM is an autonomous institute owned by a trust and to date, has graduated 12 batches of PGDM students. CEO Swami Krishnan expresses his discomfort with the name IFIM because the institute offers many other disciplines such as HR, operations, systems, etc., apart from finance and IM, which are either part of the course curriculum or in the process of inclusion.
Having invested over Rs. 25 crores in building the institute; the aesthetically designed classrooms, discussion arena, auditorium and simulation labs speak for themselves. Unlike many B-Schools IFIM has a dedicated research wing with an annual budget of Rs. 30 lakhs (where we met Dr. MR Gopalan, Director, Research). Before handing out two of his in-house journals, he explains the importance they place on innovating curricula and pedagogy.
We did notice that 13 new electives were added in the last two years and the course curriculum was updated once. The institution is equally active in organising management development programmes, both open and customised. The institute also has a budding Centre for Entrepreneurship. However, with the kind of emphasis that is placed on research, the challenge for IFIM would be to have more faculty members to carry forward their academic and research pursuits.
The industry internship programme offered to students six months prior to their graduation has garnered considerable appreciation, both from recruiters and students. The holistic evaluation system comprises both term and cumulative grade point average. It considers the continuous assessment of students in class attendance, assignments, projects, exams, research, seminars and presentations. Academic rigour is reported by most students, which is understandable as four out of every five students are freshers. More than 70 percent of the students opt for Marketing and Finance as their specialisation.
IFIM’s student exchange programmes with Grenoble Ecole, France and Fachhochschule Lubeck, Germany, gives students a chance to attend a focused two-week business orientation programme abroad. A striking feature of IFIM is the number of pre-placement offers student receives (over 60 percent last year). IFIM has a wifi-enabled, well-equipped hostel; one can opt for single occupancy room on day one.
Boys and girls stay in the same campus and have a common mess, which charges Rs. 2,000 a month for an individual. Hobby societies, gymnasium, swimming pool, and volunteer services also engage the denizens of the campus. The hostel is located 5 km away from campus but shuttle services operate on an hourly-basis. What IFIM students like: experienced faculty, proximity to numerous firms, the industry-internship programme and what mattered most, a fair track record of placements.