In August 2023, Mumbai’s National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) was turned into India’s 21st IIM. Set up in 1963 by the government with assistance from the UNDP and the ILO, the NITIE was famous as a business school for engineers – it used to accept only engineers for its management programmes. But now, as IIM Mumbai, it has started accepting eligible students from all streams.

Shashi Kiran Shetty, chairman, Board of Governors, IIM Mumbai, and Prof Manoj Tiwari, director, IIM Mumbai, told FE that opening its courses to students from all streams is just one of the many changes planned for the institute.

“We are working on a masterplan that will be executed over the next 5-10 years,” Shetty, who is also the founder & executive chairman of Allcargo Group, told FE. “The aim is to turn IIM Mumbai into one of the best B-schools in the world, at par with a Harvard or a Stanford.”

New infrastructure

IIM Mumbai has a 65-acre, beautiful campus on the banks of Vihar Lake, where it hosts about 1,200 students. “The number of students will gradually rise, and we need new buildings and need to improve the living conditions in existing buildings,” Shetty said. “Therefore, building a 21st-century infrastructure is one of our initial focus areas.”

The Board has appointed KPMG to suggest how to improve the infrastructure, and has invited a team of senior architects to the campus to figure out how it can be transformed into among the best in the world.

New faculty

At the erstwhile NITIE, there used to be faculty crunch, but a modern IIM just cannot afford that. Shetty said that filling up vacant positions in the faculty is a core task now. “It’s not easy, as we have to find the best of the professors, but we are on the right track, and vacancies are getting filled,” he said.

Prof Tiwari added that the IIM tag has already started attracting global faculty to the institute. “We have received many applications from global B-schools, some even from a school such as Stanford, who want to join us. I believe they are coming here only because of brand IIM,” Prof Tiwari said. “We will be able to create the finest professionals in the functional areas of operations management, analytics, finance, marketing, project management, HR, information technology, and sustainability management.”

Legacy issues

The third area is legacy issues such as pending legal cases. Although Shetty didn’t go into the specifics here, he said the Board is trying to find solutions to such challenges. “The aim is to remove all hinderances towards our goal of making IIM Mumbai absolutely the best in the world,” he said. “The Board is focusing on streamlining administrative and related issues, so that the director and his team can focus on improving pedagogy and doing their core job, such as teaching and research.”

Best in the world

Shetty added that for any institution to become world-class, four things are needed – land, owner’s support, right people, and location.

“We have a beautiful campus where people would love to visit and stay, and it’s just 6-7 km (20-30 minutes) from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. Now we are constructing new infrastructure. That’s the land part sorted. Our owner is the government of India, and we have their full support. We are hiring new faculty and will get even brighter students, and that means we have the right people,” Shetty said.

“Lastly, there can be no better location for a B-school than the financial capital of the country. If the IIM tag changed NITIE, the Mumbai tag will transform it. I cannot find a better city than Mumbai where a management institution can thrive.”

He added that with the NITIE becoming IIM Mumbai, there is a lot more activity on the campus, with ministers, secretaries, businesspersons and companies coming on the campus more actively.

Mumbai’s magic

Shetty has two key aims for IIM Mumbai. “Mumbai being the financial capital of India, we aim to make IIM Mumbai the best in finance in the world,” he said. “Mumbai is also the entertainment capital of India, and we want to see how IIM Mumbai can contribute towards entertainment as an industry.”

From ‘National’ to ‘Indian’

Prof Tiwari said that the change from ‘National’ to ‘Indian’ isn’t just about the name. “It will help us get better ranking, new set of companies to hire our students, and even brighter students and faculty,” he said.

The NITIE was already among the top – the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranked it seventh best in India in 2023 – but there was scope for growth. For instance, in the ‘Perception’ component, the NITIE could earn just 19.03 points out of 100 (for comparison, IIM Ahmedabad earned 96.14 points), but it scored higher than most IIMs in the ‘Research and Professional Practice’ component.

“Now, with the IIM tag, we expect to score really well in ‘Perception’ as well,” Prof Tiwari said. “We have already seen the change. For example, during the last year’s summer internship programme (SIP), 90 new companies came to our campus to hire interns. We expect even better participation this year.”

From IITs to IIMs

Education experts told FE that previously the brightest students from top IITs – who wanted to do an MBA – mostly considered top IIMs. “Someone who has graduated from an institution whose name begins with ‘Indian’ may not want to go to an institution whose name begins with ‘National’,” a former IIT professor told FE, possibly referring to NITs (National Institutes of Technology). “The brightest engineering students often choose IITs over NITs, and then IIMs over most other B-schools (if they want to do an MBA). But now that Mumbai (the financial capital) has an IIM, a lot of bright kids will choose it.”

Generating revenues

An area where IIM Mumbai will have to pull up socks is generating higher revenues. As the NITIE, it used to get Rs 75-80 crore from the government every year, but now as IIM Mumbai the government has committed only Rs 80 crore for two years (Rs 35 crore in the first year, and Rs 45 crore in the second year). After that, like other top IIMs, the institute will have to be self-sustaining.

It has already started the process towards generating higher revenue. For example, it has increased the fee for the two-year MBA from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 21 lakh (which is still lower than many top B-schools), and is getting more active in generating revenues from industry projects, management development programmes, and so on.

From PGDIM to MBA

Another change is that, as IIM Mumbai, it will be able to give an MBA degree. “The NITIE used to give the Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Management (PGDIM), which was equivalent to the two-year MBA, but some foreign companies used to get curious why MBA isn’t written on the certificate,” Prof Tiwari said.

But IIM Mumbai has retained a bit of the NITIE flavour. For instance, it has reserved one MBA from engineering/technology background. “Our MBA in Operations and Supply Chain Management is reserved for engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, etc,” Prof Tiwari said. “This programme is for about 180 students, but for the remaining 330-odd seats, IIM Mumbai is open for all. Now we will have a more diversified campus, and that will benefit students. Also keep in mind that education has become multi-disciplinary, and so students from different backgrounds will learn from each other.”

Benefiting Mumbai

With the NITIE becoming IIM Mumbai, the city has earned a rare distinction of having both an IIT (IIT Bombay) and now an IIM. In fact, the walking distance between IIT Bombay and IIM Mumbai is just about a kilometre. “We hope this will help make Mumbai a formidable hub of academics, innovation and entrepreneurship,” Shetty said.