Industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla is the new chairman of IIM Ahmedabad

Kumar Mangalam Birla

Kumar Mangalam Birla has been named the new Chairman of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

According to a Human Resource Development Ministry statement, the 49-year-old Chairman of the $41 billion industrial conglomerate Aditya Birla Group, will take over the post left vacant after A.M. Naik, the CMD of Larsen & Toubro, quit in January citing "paucity of time", IANS reported.

The premier B-school has been without a regular Chairman since then.

The HRD ministry has sent a notification to IIM Ahmedabad on Kumar Mangalam Birla's appointment, Business Standard reported. The invitation has been sent to Birla too and he has reportedly accepted the appointment.

The appointment is yet to be officially announced.

The IIM chairmanship is normally a non-executive position and the role primarily involves presiding over Board of Governors meetings and acting as IIM spokesperson. The Chairperson also takes up the issues of the institute with the Union government.

Though he has no formal authority, the Chairperson can set the agenda by guiding discussions and influencing the direction of the institute.

A committee to select the IIM Ahmedabad Chairman was set-up soon after Naik's resignation. The panel included Naik as the head, with Sanjay Lalbhai of the Arvind Group, Pankaj Patel of Zydus Cadila and D. Shivakumar of Pepsico India as the members.

Names of Deepak Parekh, Chairman of Housing Development Finance Corporation; R. Seshasayee of Infosys and Pawan Munjal, the CMD of Hero Motocorp were shortlisted by the committee. However, the then HRD Minister Smriti Irani had rejected the list.

Later, a new three-member panel was constituted, headed by Pankaj Patel. The panel dropped the name of Munjal and included that of Kumar Mangalam Birla instead.

The names were approved by the institute's Board of Governors in September and sent to the HRD Ministry for nod.