“Human capital development has to become the top priority of Indian business and industry. Thousands of schools, colleges and skills development centres need to be promoted immediately in urban and rural India to fulfill industry’s growing demand for skilled professionals,” says Jaithirth aka Jerry Rao, founder chief executive and chairman of the Bangalore/New York-based software major Mphasis-BFL (no. of employees: 12,000; sales revenue: Rs.742 crore), who as the head of Citibank India’s consumer banking division in the 1980s, introduced credit cards and personal banking in India. In 2006 after scaling up Mphasis-BFL, Rao sold his major stake in the company to the US-based software and consultancy major EDS to join the ranks of the country’s seriously rich HNWIs (high net worth individuals). Since then Rao has bankrolled several enterprises and start-ups across the country.
Among them is the Fostiima Business School, Delhi, promoted under the auspices of the Sri Balaji Human Resource Development Trust, of which Rao is the chairman. Fostiima, which admitted its first batch of students in July 2007, celebrated its first anniversary recently. Delhi’s newest B-school, which offers undergraduate and postgraduate business management education to 150 students, owes its unusual nomenclature to ‘Friends of Seventy Three of IIM Ahmedabad’, a fraternity of IIM-Ahmedabad batchmates which includes Rao, Anil Somani, Sunil Kala, Kamal Sharma, T.L. Palani Kumar, Rajan Sanghi and Rajesh Kaura. All of them graduated from India’s premier B-school in 1973.
“Of the 200,000 plus students who write CAT (Common Admission Test), only 2,000 are admitted into the IIMs. Fostiima’s objective is to offer students who don’t make it into the IIMs the opportunity to experience near IIM standard B-school education. We have a large number of IIM graduates on our full-time and part-time faculty. Given that Fostiima’s promoters are all IIM-A alumni with wide industry experience, we haven’t had problems inviting experienced corporate faculty to teach/ mentor at Fostiima. I’m confident that within a short period of time Fostiima will emerge as a top-tier business school,” says Rao, an alumnus of Loyola College, Chennai, IIM-A and University of Chicago, who served with Citibank for over 20 years in various capacities prior to promoting Mphasis-BFL in 1998.
Fostiima’s undergrad and postgrad management programs combine academic rigour with strong practical learning. “The management education we provide is strong not just on the theoretical side, but leverages the actual real-life experiences of successful managers from numerous sectors of Indian industry,” says Rao.
Enthused by the response to its maiden venture in Delhi, the Balaji Trust has drawn up plans to promote Fostiima clones in Jaipur, Gwalior, Pune, Bangalore, Gurgaon, and Patna. “Scaling up operations is important to make an impact in a large country like India. Our B-school in Delhi is only the first step in our quest for establishing a chain of high quality B-schools across the country,” says Rao.
Judging by his track record in Indian industry, that isn’t an empty promise.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)