EWIHER 2022-2023:India’s Top 100 Private B-Schools

Since the vast majority of aspirants for business management education have to choose from among 6,000 B-schools, the majority of them privately promoted, the annual EWIHER solely ranks the country’s Top 100 private B-schools, writes Dilip Thakore

ISB’s Prof. R.S. Thirumalai (centre)

Since 2013, the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings designed to facilitate the selection of suitable higher education institutions for further study, have rated and ranked the country’s best government and private B-schools separately. Although initially we also rated and ranked the most well-reputed among the 20 Central government-promoted IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management), after a few years your editors decided to drop them from the EWIHER on the ground that they monotonously topped the annual B-school rankings generating a sense of déjà vu. Moreover despite being awarded huge campuses and premises by the Union government, the IIMs annually admit a mere 2 percent of graduate students who write their joint Common Admission Test (CAT). The vast majority of aspirants for business management education have to choose one or other of 6,000 B-schools the majority of them privately promoted. Therefore for the past seven years the annual EWIHER solely rates and ranks the country’s Top 100 private B-schools.

Ab initio the league table of India’s Top 100 private B-schools has been dominated by the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad (ISB) promoted in 2001 by the biggest names in India Inc, including the Bros Ambani, Adi Godrej, Bros Goenka among others. Sprawled over a 260-acre state-of-the-art campus in Gachibowli, a suburb of Hyderabad, ISB is not ‘recognised’ by AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) because its flagship postgrad compressed business management study programme is of 13-months duration against the standard 24-months programme mandated by AICTE. But ISB is routinely ranked above the IIMs by the London-based Financial Times and its MBA graduates are snapped up by Indian and offshore companies at remuneration packages equaling and often exceeding the premier ABC (Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta) IIMs.

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“We are glad that ISB is continuously ranked the country’s #1 private B-school. This is the outcome of our being able to offer substantial value to students through the involvement of all stakeholders. ISB has always been forward-looking and invested with the mission to offer competitive advantage to our students. This school’s future-ready approach has enabled us to remain ahead of the curve and consistently set new benchmarks in business management education,” says Prof. Rambhadran S. Thirumalai, deputy dean of ISB.

Thirumalai isn’t perturbed in the least that this premier B-school is not recognised by AICTE and therefore by government. “Over the past two decades, ISB has carved a niche for itself as a top-ranked Indian B-school. Although ISB has not had the honour of AICTE recognition, we are accredited by the US-based Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), Belgium-based EFMD Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) and the UK-based Association of MBAs (AMBA). These are highly prestigious international recognitions for B-schools. ISB is one of only 100 B-schools worldwide to have been awarded the ‘triple crown’ of AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA accreditation,” says Thirumalai, a Ph D in finance from the Indiana University of Bloomington, who signed up with ISB in 2006. Currently, ISB has 900 students enrolled in its one-year postgraduate diploma programme mentored by 60-plus faculty.

Rajesh Chakrabarti, director of the highly-reputed but low-profile Management Development Institute, Gurugram (MDI, estb. 1973), which has been steadily ranked India’s #3 private B-school, is also pleased with MDI’s Top 3 ranking.

I’m very pleased that MDI has retained its Top 3 ranking for the past several years. For our curriculum and pedagogy and strong industry connect, MDI is commonly accepted as the most progressive B-school in North India and I’m glad that your survey reflects this. We are in the process of stepping up our research and deepening our industry interface. Fortunately our location in Gurugram, which has emerged as a tech and industry hub, enables us to do this quickly. We also intend to improve our public visibility and expand our intake capacity in the near future. These initiatives will go a long way in improving our rankings in media surveys.

–Rajesh Chakrabarti, an alumnus of Presidency University, Kolkata, IIM-Ahmedabad and former dean of the O.P. Jindal School of Business, who signed up as Director of MDI in June 2021.

With XLRI, Jamshedpur retaining its #2 ranking of the past three years, further down the Top 10 table, the School of Business Management, NMIMS Deemed University, Mumbai has been given a promotion and is co-ranked #3 (4) with MDI; the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad is promoted to #4 (5); S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai has retained its #4 rank of 2021-22; and Symbiosis Institute, Pune, ICFAI B-school, T.A. Pai Management Institute and several other B-schools have been moved by a rank. The Top 10 table is completed by the S.P. Jain School of Global Management, Mumbai which has made a great leap forward in public esteem to #10 (15).

It is pertinent to note that state rankings are perhaps as important for B-schools as national rankings. For instance, the School of Business Management, NMIMS Deemed University, Mumbai ranked India #3 is the premier B-school of Maharashtra, India’s most industrial state and of Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital. Likewise, TAPMI (T.A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal) is the #1 private B-school in Karnataka and Bengaluru which hosts India’s largest cluster of new genre ICT (information communication technology) corporations. It would be a grave error to evaluate B-schools merely on the basis of national rank.