We firmly believe in regularly upgrading our curriculum, says Dr. Amit Bhadra, Dean of WSB

Dr Amit Bhadra, Dean of Woxsen School of Business holds a PhD degree from Pacific University, Udaipur. He has completed his BE from National Institute of Technology, Surat and PGDM from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He has been awarded with the University Gold Medallist Award by NIT Surat.

In this Take 5-Series with Shiksha, Dr Amit Bhadra talks about the unique aspects of studying at Woxsen School of Business; the kind of projects, internships and placement opportunities that students have, the best programs to study and how to take admission to these.

Q. What are the three things that your institute is doing that will enable it to differentiate itself from the competition?

Woxsen School of Business is the youngest B-School to be conferred with prestigious memberships by the two largest and most revered global accreditation bodies in business education - AACSB (USA) and AMBA (UK).

WSB takes pride in being quite different from other institutes and it’s all for good reasons. Let me share a few insights on what sets us apart from others in the league:

a) Strong Global Focus

Our constant endeavour is towards getting better than the best both in terms of curriculum and faculty.

 Global curriculum: We firmly believe in regularly upgrading our curriculum basis our internal research and inputs from the industry veterans. Aside from that, we also seek inputs from other global partner universities to ensure our curriculum and students stay ahead of the curve.

Global faculty: Apart from some of the nationally acclaimed faculty members, we also have some of the finest names from Ivy League Universities teaching at WSB. We understand and acknowledge the need for domain experts and hence, many of the critical courses at WSB are taught by faculty from reputed Business-schools of the UK and the USA.

Some of the regulars at WSB from the international faculty are Dr Costas Andriopoulos (Associate Dean, CASS Business School | Visiting Faculty, University of Oxford), Dr Manto Gotsi (Reader, University of Westminster and Former Sr. Lecturer at Cardiff Business School), Dr JC Wandemberg (Former dean, Woxsen School of Business | Lecturer at renowned universities of North/ South America and Europe) Dr Piyush Kumar (Associate Prof. Terry College of Business, University of Georgia), Dr Ioannis P. Christodoulou (Sr. Lecturer, University of Westminster) and Prof. Tawfiq Elahi (Consulting and Academia, UK | MBA, Babson Graduate School of Business).

Academic leadership: Right from its inception, WSB has consciously focused to constitute an Academic Advisory Board, in our quest to create a rich academic talent pool. This apex Academic body consists of the following eminent personalities from Academia: 

The role of the Academic Advisory Board is to provide overall direction to the strategic initiatives of the institute. The Academic Advisory Board reviews admission processes, pedagogy, program structure, courses taught, faculty composition and profiles and placement records.

The Academic Advisory Board guides the choice of accreditations to be sought and makes an important contribution to the process of achieving higher grades in the accreditation process.

Board of Studies: The Board of Studies of WSB, which helps develop the institute’s academic programme has a strong representation from the industry. The industry members are from top corporates, including IBM, Lafarge Holcim, Satchi and Satchi, Lowe Libya’s, Borosil Limited, L&T, Hinduja Group, L’Oreal and Google. 

Global Immersion Program in partnership with reputed institutions: Woxsen School of Business Programs offer Global Immersion at Nanyang Business School, Singapore (FT Rank 27) and Mannheim Business School, Germany (FT Rank 77) giving students exposure to global business, cutting edge developments in the techno-management environment and global business culture and ethos.

The Global Immersion Programs give students an opportunity to interact with the international cohort of these institutions. These interventions create a much wider appreciation of global business parameters and the interlinkages and thus thereby create globally sensitive managers.

Q. What are the top three initiatives that are undertaken by you that are helping your students become more industry ready?

 The top three initiatives that are undertaken by us are:

• Focussed Skill Development Programs in each of the areas of specialisations of Marketing, Finance, Operations, HR and Analytics to help our students excel in their functional domains.
• Industry Interface and Internship on live projects offering industry-exposure sessions: These sessions are held at two levels, namely Infinite Quest Series and Search of Excellence Series. While in Infinite Quest Series industry and academic leaders talk about business from a strategic standpoint, in the other series operational leaders talk about domain-centric business issues and their responses thereof.
• Well-executed summer internships that help students to the work on real-life operational challenges and pushes them to explore solutions which are effective, sustainable and organisation friendly. With this objective in mind, WSB has created an intensive faculty-supervised 12-week internship programme aimed at giving holistic professional development to make them future and industry-ready.
  • WSB has also deployed the latest pedagogical tools based on the requirements of the top accreditation bodies such as AACSB, AMBA and NBA that increase student employability. The pedagogy provide Outcome-Based Curriculum that measures a student’s degree of attainments in the hierarchical order of learning and application. It also provides case and simulation-based methodology that helps the faculty to bring in real business problems in the classroom and helps the student understand various facets of decision making.

Q. What are the key attributes that a student should have in order to qualify for your institution and Get top grades in your institution?

The attributes the student must have in order to qualify at Woxsen School of Business:

• Good Scores in either of the leading Entrance Tests like CAT, XAT, GRE, GMAT and NMAT
• Score well in the Personal Interview Round
• Learning oriented attitude with good communication skills

 The attributes the student must focus to do well at Woxsen School of Business:

• Domain prowess
• Quantitative aptitude
• Analytical ability
• Excellent communication skills
• Collaborative approach and teamwork
• Networking skills
• Empathy

Q. Which programme would you say is your best? What is it that helps your institution differentiate itself for this programme?

Woxsen School of Business is the youngest B-School to be conferred with prestigious memberships by the two largest and most revered global accreditation bodies in business education—AACSB and AMBA.

Owing to this and the legacy of Woxsen, our flagship programs – the two-year full-time PGDM programme and the one-year full-time PGPXP programme, are considered at par with the programmes offered by some of the Ivy League institutions across the world. The same gets corroborated from the feedback we regularly receive from the aspirants, business education community as well as from the industry leaders.  

In line with the latest trends in technology space, WSB has launched a new cutting edge program in Business Analytics and Artificial Intelligence i.e. PGDM – BA. AI. ML, designed exclusively in partnership with the Business Leaders after reflecting on the current needs and the Skillset gaps.

Highlights of the PGDM and PGPXP programmes:

• Program Curriculum and Pedagogy is ahead of the curve since it is based on research and industry inputs
• Nationally acclaimed resident faculty | Ivy League visiting faculty 
• Global Immersion Partnership with Nanyang Business School, Singapore (FT Rank 27) and Mannheim Business School,  Germany (FT Rank 77)
• Round the year interaction with the industry leaders and an opportunity to work on live projects
• Holistic learning while balancing the functional and behavioural skills

 Q. What are you doing to improve campus placements for your current students and alumni? What kind of jobs routinely come to campus? What would you say are the key recruitment trends for your college (observed over the past five years)?

For the current students WSB has taken the following initiatives:

• Focussed Skill Development Programs in each of the areas of specialisations of Marketing, Finance, Operations, HR and Analytics to help our students stay ahead of the curve and make them industry-ready.
• Fully active placement team that regularly engages with the industry leaders for their talent needs. 
• We have an outreach calendar in place, where the industry is called for guest lectures, infinite quest series and summer internships.

For the Alumni WSB has taken the following initiatives:

• Alumni portal with a provision for the job notification

• Dedicated placement person for lateral openings

• Formal alumni society that organises Alumni networking events

The roles for which the companies usually hire from us are: 

Over the last couple of years, corporates coming to our campus for meeting their talent needs have almost doubled. To name a few, we have recently added the below corporates in the list of empanelled brands: 

Job Roles:

• Management Trainees
• Business Development Managers
• Sales and Marketing 
• Financial Analyst 
• Corporate Planning and Strategy
• Operations Manager 
• HR Domains like Talent Acquisition and L&D

Q. Key recruitment trends at WSB (observed over the past five years)?

Over the last 5 years, we have evolved as an institution and consistently monitor the below 3 metrics:

• The percentage of the batch placed
• Highest CTC/package offered
• Top 20 per cent CTC/package offered

We are absolutely delighted to share that we have significantly grown in the past five years for each of the three KPIs. Sharing some of the facts below:

• 97 per cent of our batch got placed in 2019 (rest-seeking entrepreneurial roles)
• Highest CTC/package offered to (2019 batch) stood at Rs 13.80 lakh (38 per cent growth over 2018)
• Top 20 per cent average package stood at Rs 8.8 lakh per annum (six per cent growth over 2018)