IIMA Confluence: a melting pot of global minds

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Ahmedabad, Nov 24: The sylvan greens of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad campus have become a veritable melting pot for a confluence of the best b-brains from both domestic and international management schools.

With Confluence 2005, IIMA's much-looked-forward-to four-day management festival kicking off on Thursday amidst much fanfare, enthusiasm and gusto, management students from various parts of the country and from far-flung cities like Shanghai, Rotterdam and Berkeley are getting down to business right away. Whether it's sharing notes about academic curricula, global economies, size of campuses or comparison of management festivals - everything is being discussed animatedly, the precursor for forging new b-bonds among tomorrow's future movers and shakers of India Inc and World Inc.

Thorsten Seegar, a German student at the Shanghai-based China Europe International Business School for instance, feels the festival would be an ideal platform "to meet the future leaders of Indian companies."

Though he admits ignorance about the IIMA since "in Europe we don't have much information about the IIMA," the "very beautiful campus" of India's premier b-school as well as the "very high standard of its students" have already made an indelible impression on him. Raring to participate in as many events as possible over the next three days, Mr Seegar feels management festivals like Confluence are a great way to see "a new country, meet new people and should be organised more often."

Fellow student Jenny Jing, a Chinese student at CEIBS had, unlike Mr Seegar, read about the IIMA in newspapers and journals and would definitely like to come over as part of an exchange programme. Visibly excited about the beauty of the IIMA campus which "is so huge compared to our campus which is really small by comparison", Mr Jing is quite excited about meeting Indian management students and sharing notes on management education.

Tim Stucks, an MBA candidate 2007 with the University of California's Berkeley Haas School of Business is gung-ho about participating in all four events of the festival. "I have heard a lot about the IIMA and given a chance, would even love to study here. I was really looking forward to coming for this festival and have really prepared well for the Case contest in particular," he says.