NIIT Imperia to set up 40 centres by March '09

Launching its seventh centre in Ahmedabad, NIIT Imperia announced that it would set up at least 40 centres in 30 cities by the end of March 2009.

The executive management education initiative of NIIT, a talent development corporation, presently has six centres including Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata.

Speaking of NIIT Imperia, Smarajit Dey, president-strategic initiatives, NIIT said, "For over a year now, we have been offering executive management education programmes for working professionals through our tie-up with Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) of Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Indore and IIMT-Ghaziabad.

We are in the process of opening centres in Pune, Bhubaneshwar and Nagpur, apart from Ahmedabad which we launched today. We are now hoping to open 40 centres across India in 30 cities and are in process of tying up with other management institutes apart from IIMs."

The centre at Ahmedabad will house the Institute of Finance, Banking & Insurance (IFBI), NIIT's venture with minor equity participation from ICICI Bank, launched simultaneously.

Imperia offers management programmes designed and conducted by IIMs and other institutes for working professionals through virtual classrooms at the centres.

"The professionals can now take up post graduate diploma programmes of IIMs and other reputed institutions from our virtual classrooms based on Synchronous Real Time Learning (SRTL) in their own cities. The programmes are of one year duration and would be based on general management, functional management and other sectoral topics," said Dey.

On the other hand, IFBI offers post graduate diploma in banking operation (PGDBO) of six months duration and will soon be introducing post graduate diploma courses in Financial Planning and Insurance, Dey informed, adding that around 600,000 professionals are required for the banking sector in the next 4-5 years and an equal number are required in other financial sectors like securities and mutual funds.

IFBI is in the process of being introduced in metros and will be launched in Ahmedabad in the period of 3-6 months, said Dey. According to Dey, around 300 students pass out every year from IFBI in spite of a capacity of 2,100 students per quarter.

While, NIIT Imperia has a student capacity of 2,500 per annum and the growing demand might make it necessary to set up more centres, said Dey.