India Inc charts the right course

Companies are back guiding management schools and structuring courses for them so that they can absorb the right talent from these institutes.

Pantaloon Retail and e-Serve are actively participating in developing course content for B-schools, jointly certifying courses and later absorbing the trained students in their companies.

Pantaloon Retail, for instance, has tied up with L N Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research in Mumbai, K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, Asian School of Management, Bhubaneshwar and Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management (IISWBM), Kolkata for retail management courses. The retail chain has sponsored employees undergoing training at these institutes. However, the deal is that the other students will be absorbed into the Pantaloon fraternity, provided they meet the grade.

"For us at IISWBM, such an arrangement makes sense, at least in the immediate context. Other than providing guaranteed placement for the students, it also provides the students an opportunity to get trained in core areas of expertise in the field of retail management. On graduating, the students will be taken on a management trainees by Pantaloon retail and then assigned responsibility post confirmation," says Gairik Das, course co-ordinator, IISWBM.

This model of tailoring courses benefits both the companies and the institutes "� while the companies can reduce costs on manpower training and have a ready source of skilled personnel, trained to suit the needs of the company, the institutes gain credibility by maximising on the placement guarantee while admitting students. The course fee for the specialised Pantaloons retail management course at IISWBM is Rs 2.5 lakh for two years. The current batch has 60 students with 10 being sponsored by the company.

The management course that e-Serve has developed for its employees in conjunction with Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI) Flexible Education (FE) is based on a different model. It costs more than a similar course than ICFAI has on offer itself. The course fee has been fixed by the company itself and students directly pay their fees to it, informed ICFAI officials. In this case, the arrangement acts as some sort of a revenue earner as well.

Other companies are expected to follow suit. However, are these models sustainable and advantageous for students? Opinions differ. Professor of marketing at the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, Sudash Roy feels that the model is interesting, especially when two renowned organisations with considerable credibility are involved in the exercise of developing a course for the benefit of the industry.

For retail, this is especially applicable since the sector is upcoming and not too many courses are on offer to cater to the demand in this industry. However, whether students will be employed by rival organisations on completion of these tailor-made courses will be seen only when the first batch of students graduate, says Roy.

ICFAI officials seemed skeptical about the success of such courses in the long run, reasoning that the skill set needed by one organisation might not be the same that another would be looking for. Therefore, the students might stand a chance of getting a certificate that would not stand them in good stead in the long run.

Vikram Dasgupta of Globsyn Business Schools is, however, against such arrangements. "This phenomenon is nothing new. With the rise of every industry, companies have always come forward with the offer to develop courses. However, once they got too busy with their own affairs, they have backed out of the deal, leaving students and institutions in the lurch. Moreover, it is better to get courses developed by companies that have been in the industry for a very long time than by those which are relatively new. For this reason, it is important to develop courses in consultation with companies and institutes abroad", he maintains.