Leading the way among laggards

Two consecutive five-year terms of strong leadership have helped IIM Indore reach closer to the Big 4 - A, B, C and L

In 2008, when Professor N Ravichandran took charge as the director of IIM Indore, no one would have thought it was a 12 year old institute. The campus and its infrastructure was nothing to speak of, the institute hardly had any students (150-odd), 25-odd faculty members, offered a single programme and had an atmosphere of hopelessness. It had seen a few directors come and ago — more than one had left facing corruption charges.

“It felt like a government run institution with a 9 to 5 culture. At best drifting”, says Ravichandran. The institute was enveloped in a sort of