The growth of one-year executive MBA programs in India

by Arun Jagannathan  

Imagine that you were a mid-career professional in India in the 1990s. If you did not have an MBA right out of college then chances were that you never got around to doing an MBA ever. You of course had the option of doing a Management Development Program (MDP) at one of these schools but that was pretty much all you could do by way of getting an education in management. In hindsight it looks a bit cruel but that is how it was. 

The trend started to change in 2001 when ISB launched its one-year program for mid-career professionals in India. For the first time, those who "missed the boat" after graduation, now had an option to immerse themselves in a full-time one-year program that gave them both the management perspective required to excel at work as well as the credentials of an MBA needed for career progression.

To cater to this need almost all top B-Schools in India started offering a one-year executive MBA option.  

These are some of the top courses offered today for mid-career professionals:

 1. ISB

 2. IIM Ahmedabad

 3. IIM Bangalore

 4. IIM Lucknow

 5. IIM Calcutta

 6. GLIM

 7. XLRI

 8. SP Jain

 

As all of these programs require a GMAT score for admission, the applicant has the luxury to take the test anytime of the year. Also, as the GMAT scores are valid for a few years, he or she can apply even with test scores from the previous years. So today there are over 50,000 applicants with a valid GMAT score i.e. taken in the last few years. Hence, the supply-demand scenario seems to be in equilibrium. 

There are three fundamental reasons why a lot of Indians in the mid-20s and early-30s are looking for one-year full-time executive MBA program.

 

1. Too young back then

Many people end up making career decisions when they are way too young to decide for themselves. Mostly in India, you end up choosing what you will do for the rest of your life when you are still in your teens. So either you take up commerce and then go on to do your C.A alongside your B.Com or you take up science and go on to do medicine or engineering.

Many a time, people realise in their 20s that their calling in life is different. So an engineer might realise that his quantitative skills are what are needed to shine in finance. A doctor might realise that she loves healthcare administration more than performing surgeries. A finance professional might realise that he is better at business development than toiling way at a P&L sheet.

An executive one-year MBA provides the perfect avenue to make such career alterations. It gives you the necessary tools and frameworks to equip yourself for a new career using your existing skills and experience.

View some career paths you might want to explore post-MBA.

 

 

2. Realisation of the importance of networking and brand  

When you started your career, you perhaps were perhaps placed in a company through campus recruitment. With a few years of experience, you started relying on job portals such as Naukri and Monster to provide you with new opportunities. 

However, with a few more years of experience, and a few more companies under your belt, you start to realise that the next job is not going to come from WHAT you know but rather WHO you know. This is known the Rolodex power. People have started to understand the importance of creating such a personal network – one that gives them a foot in the door to top-level opportunities that don't get advertised visibly. At the end of the day, the business world still works like an old boys' association. 

 An MBA for mid-career executives, such as the IIM-A PGPX or the ISB PGP understands this requirement. So the career assistance cells in such institutes do not only give you a prestigious and unique email id (such as one ending with a @iimahd.ernet.in) , but also access to Alumni directories and city-wise chapters. So the next time you get invited to a cocktail dinner for the alumni in your city - you never know who might provide you with a lead to your next career jump.

 

3. Ability to see things from a different perspective

At the start of your career, you wanted to be a specialist. You wanted to excel in your field so you could be a whiz at whatever you did. You dreamt of an IIT degree or perhaps wanted to be the best Java coder. That might have given you the drive and grit to power your way through 4 years of college course work. It is perfectly normal for everyone to start their career with such thoughts.

But soon you realise that in life and in your career, the people who are successful are not necessarily the genius specialists but the empathetic generalists. Perhaps you also start realising your strengths and weakness a lot better. Yes you like the technical details but you love the bigger picture. So maybe you want to go from being a coder to being a product manager. Maybe you want to grow from being an analyst who works with data to being a consultant who makes sense of that data. Whatever your goals be - you realise you want to see things with a different perspective. 

In an MBA you will learn from the top faculty, the core courses that expose you to the standard subjects of management such as Accounting, Marketing, Organisation Behaviour, Finance, and Operations. But the biggest learning you will get will be from your teammates. Most such one-year programs would require you to work with a diverse team for all project work, where you’d have to   debate and argue your perspective. Getting exposed to multiple voices and thought processes round the clock for one straight year can do a lot more good to you than you can imagine. Also unlike a conventional two-year MBA when you are perhaps too naive to understand the subtleties of interacting with people from various backgrounds, the one-year MBA program has people who have worked enough years to understand and appreciate the differences in points of view.

 

About the Author

Arun Jagannathan is the founder and CEO of CrackVerbal - a test prep company for GMAT, GRE, and Application Services.