Daybreak - XLRI introduced India to management studies. But now it's done being just another B-school

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Back in 1949, XLRI introduced India to management studies.  Since then, it has managed to become one of the most sought after B-schools in the country. For decades, it was like the dependable elder statesman of Indian management education. But now, XLRI wants to be anything but just another business school. In the last two decades, there has been an explosion of MBA seats across the country.  Now, XLRI doesn’t want to simply add more management seats mindlessly. It wants to introduce programmes it thinks are relevant. Some of which, have nothing to do with management studies at all. What's going on? Tune in. P.S The Ken’s podcast team is hiring! Here’s what we’re looking for.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.Listen to the latest episode of Two by Two here

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Back in 1949, XLR introduced India to management studies. And since then, it's managed to become one of the most sought-after B-schools in the country. It's also become the dependable elder statesman of Indian management education. But now, XLRI is done being just that. Today it wants to be anything but just another business school. The Ken reporter Alifia Khan wanted to understand why. So she spoke to Monish Thakur, the Dean of Academics at XLR's Delhi NCR campus. His reasons were simple.

You see, back in 2007, there were about six IIMs. And today, there are 21. You also have the likes of ISB that have completely shaken up the management education landscape. Basically, there's been an explosion of MBA seats across the country, but according to Mnish, the real question is whether there is still a market for it. Now, XLR doesn't want to simply add more management seats mindlessly. It wants to introduce programs it thinks are relevant. You see, in the past, B-Schools have tried amping things up for exactly the same reasons.

So they'll offer a few online courses, chase rankings. Now, XLRI is going all the way, starting with expanding its campuses. It added a second campus in Delhi, NCR four years ago, and now it's adding a third and a fourth in Amravati, Andhra Pradesh and Mumbai, Maharashtra. The Institute looks like it's adopting a model similar to the Indian School of Business. ISB calls it the one-school-two-campuses approach, and the point of it is to eliminate the bias of comparing campuses against each other. But if you look closer, XLRI is doing things differently.

And here's the most surprising part of XLRI's new growth strategy. Most of these new campuses may not even entirely focus on management education anymore. More on that later. But for now, all of this seems to be part of XLRI's plan to pursue some of the most prestigious accreditations, like the UK's Association of MBAs and Europe's EFMD Quality Improated. movement system. Put simply, the institution is making all the right moves to catch the attention of ranking bodies. Is it enough? Welcome to Debrai, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host Rahil Philippos and I'll be joining my colleagues Nikda Sharma every day of the week to bring you one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Tuesday, the 17th of December.

Today, XLRI is very boldly going where most B-Schools in India have not gone back. just take it some Ravati campus for instance. Here, it wants to introduce integrated and undergraduate degrees in law and liberal arts, alongside management education, of course. It's a work in progress still, but casting their net into a wider ocean of academic possibilities is a big part of the XLRI 2.0 project. Other B schools like IIM Aemdabad and Calcutta have gone as far as offering undergraduate management-related courses.

But that's about it. So it's quite apparent that XLRI is trying to set itself apart from the crowd by not being your typical MBA school. Another big part of this makeover is expanding its campuses, like I mentioned before. In Neeral, which is a two-hour drive from Mumbai, the institute has acquired 50 acres of land. And here it plans to focus on executive education with a special focus on finance. The logic, of course, is that the university.

the campus is so close to India's financial capital. Even the Indian School for Automobiles that XLR set up at its Delhi NCR campus is gearing up to welcome its first intake as early as December 2025. It's designed sort of like a finishing school for design graduates. So they'll be trained here in management and sustainability principles. Speaking of which, sustainability is another thing XLRI has really gone all out with. At the Jamshedpur campus, for instance, a similar centre on sustainability has been around since 2011.

It's called the Father Arupé Center for Ecology and Sustainability, and the idea is to promote thought leadership and policymaking on the subject. In fact, SLRI's drive for carbon neutrality is exactly what has put it on the global map. But will it stay there? Stay tuned. Just last month, the Financial Times released its annual B-School rankings. It basically evaluates global B-schools based on factors like weighted salary, career progress, alumina network, international faculty, diversity, sustainability. Now, sure, XLR made it to the top 100 B-Schools list. But funnily enough, the top Indian B-School in that list was an XLRI or any of the IIMs.

It was actually ISB, which was ranked 31 globally. Whatever your opinion may be about these rankings, they are pretty, integral to any university. Like KS Kasimir director at XLRI's Delhi NCR campus said, it's a matter of prestige. Getting international accreditation helps big time with ranking parameters. So to achieve that, the institute is busy balancing gender diversity in both its faculty and admissions and also ramping up international mobility.

Let me explain what that means. You see, one of the biggest reasons XLRI decided to move BEOCIAs, beyond the OJ Jamshedpur campus was because of international mobility. Foreign faculty found it difficult to come and even exchange programs became difficult because Jamshedpur isn't connected very well. So at some point the institute decided to move to bigger cities. Like I mentioned a little while ago, a lot of people claimed XLR seems to be mimicking ISB in a way with its campus expansion strategy, the sister campus strategy.

So at XLRI, it was made clear immediately. that the requirement for faculty would not be diluted. Faculty were in fact moved from Jamshedpur to Delhi to maintain that academic rigor. And the new ones that were hired got the same salaries. Besides that, the curriculum, examination, and even placement process all remained the same. But unlike ISP, which treats its Hyderabad and Mojali campuses as one,

XLRI is taking a different path, that of a deemed university. But to do that, XLR has to offer a whole bouquet of courses, from undergraduate to postgraduate and from management to non-management. More in the next segment. One of the biggest attractions for any university today is whether it has affiliations with foreign universities and whether students will be able to go abroad for a semester or two. Now, that has been pretty challenging for XLRI. You see, the Institute is affiliated with the All India Council for Technical Education and governed by the U.S.LRI. University Grants Commission or UGC norms, which is why there have been a lot of challenges

in offering joint degree programs with foreign universities or even hiring international faculty. It also doesn't help that XLR still only offers PGDM courses, while the world over, people have already moved to an MBA. It is especially hinder students who want to go abroad. Now, this isn't really the first time XLRI has still tried expanding out of India. The Institute attempted to set up centres in Dubai back in 2001 and also in Singapore in 2006. By the latter didn't take off, the one operating in Dubai with a local business partner hasn't really tasted success like the main Jamshedpur campus.

One IIM professor put it this way. Announcing a campus is easy, but getting the same kind of faculty and placing students at the same package is a massive task. One of the reasons for not adding as many management seats in fact, could be because they couldn't place so many students in those packages. That could also be why XLRI is doing things that most of its peers have already done, like taking its executive education courses online. Institutes like ISB or the IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta

offer online programs either through their own platforms or through tie-ups with ed techs. Meanwhile, XLRi is only starting to figure things out now. All said and done, the XLRI. growth story is unlike that of any other B-school. India's oldest B-school is reinventing itself. And as per former faculty and students, when it does, it will once again show the path pave the way for the rest of the management education landscape.

That still doesn't mean the MBA is dead. Companies are still flocking to B-schools and students are racking up even bigger loans. But XLRI's experiment might show schools that they need to think bigger. bigger. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings.

A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. Head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website. Today's episode was hosted by Rahil Filippo's and edited by Rajiv Sien.