IIM-A, Duke CE tie up for corporate course

The US-based Duke Corporate Education (Duke CE) has entered into a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) for customised corporate education programmes in India and West Asia.

The programme, which would be a one of its kind in Asia, is all set to take-off by August"�end.

Duke CE's global resource network would rope in the best faculties from both the institutes to impart management training to CEOs and other higher and middle level executives from multinational companies, said Bakul Dholakia, director of IIM-A.

An Indian MNC has already signed up for the programme and will reportedly enroll around 1,300 of its executives in various management levels starting from September.

"Training of higher level executives is at a nascent stage in the country and with 5,000 new CEOs required in the next five years, the programme will go a long way in achieving a 10 per cent growth rate," said Dholakia.

Starting with large multinational companies and covering public sector units eventually, the programmes, ranging from three days to several months, would be formulated based on client's needs.

Although a formal investment or logistics plan for the programme hasn't been worked out yet, the client company would be offered programmes that meet its present structure and future needs. The client company would have the option to conduct training either at its own infrastructure or at IIM-A's new campus.

Since the training would be client-customised, unlike structured programmes in the institute, none of the programmes would have a fixed fee structure. The cost could be anything between $100 to $ 600 per executive per day depending on the programme, said Shailendra Mehra, who will be heading the programme.

IIM-A expects to train around 70,000 executives at various managerial levels per year with the commencement of the programme which is at present available in 43 countries.

The agreement is being seen by IIM-A as an opportunity for the faculty to interact with their counterparts from other countries and create a confluence of new ideas.