ISB looks at a larger pie of foreign students

The Indian School of Business (ISB), which has modelled itself on the lines of foreign B-Schools by offering a one-year courses and tying up with reputed international B- Schools, is now on a marketing spree.

Having tapped students from the metropolitan cities, the institution is now in the middle of an exercise to attract more and more students from second-rung cities of the country.

ISB is also making a major thrust in attracting more foreign students. While almost all the foreign students enrolled so far in the Hyderabad based B-school are non-resident Indians, ISB is now targeting more foreign students from east European countries and India's nighbours.

"We are a four year old institution and while our thrust earlier was the metropolitan cities, ISB is now making serious efforts to reach out further. While 10 to twelve second rung Indian cities are the focus for our expanding mode, ISB is also making huge efforts to have foreign students from developing economies to get enrolled at the institute. We are looking at a larger presence of east European and Saarc countries' students at ISB from this year," said Ajit Rangnekar, Deputy Dean, ISB, who was in Ahmedabad on Tuesday.

Some of the cities from where ISB is now looking for a larger presence of students are Pune, Indore, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore and other cities. "Since ISB insists that students getting enrolled must have work experience, students from Gujarat have a huge edge over others. The people here are very enterprising," said Rangnekar.

In the past academic year, ISB had enrolled 276 students, and aims to increase the intake of students to between 300 and 320 for the academic session that begins April 2005. According to Rangnekar, globally, the number of two-year MBA programmes has gone down, while the one-year programmes have increased.

The number of freshers (those without work experience) taken at ISB is very less, with just about two or three beign admitted every year.

"At present, the bulk of our students come from western, southern and northern parts of the country, along with NRI students," said Rangnekar.