I B S 

An Idea Whose Time has Come: The Story of the Indian School of Business by Pramath Raj Sinha; Published by Penguin India ; Pages 210; Price Rs 499/-

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Pramath Raj Sinha is the Founder and Managing Director of 9.9 Mediaworx, a special- interest  media company. He was formerly a partner with McKinsey & Company, the international management consulting firm, where he continuesto be a Senior Adviser. He has been intensely involved with ISB since its inception in 1996, first as the project’s CEO and then as ISB’s founding Dean and Executive Board member. He is now leading a philanthropic initiative to build Ashoka University, which launched its flagship Young India Fellowship in2011. Pramath has a B.Tech. from IIT Kanpur and an MSE and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad has been ranked No. 7 and No. 8 in Best  B-school surveys. It has been ranked among the top 20 global B-schools by the Financial Times, a spectacular achievement by any measure. It has a (visiting) faculty roster that makes other schools   turn green with envy, and students who are among the best in the country.

 Sinha, a partner at McKinsey & Co. when the ISB project was launched in 1996 - the school itself started in 2001 - became an academic, ISB's founding dean,at the insistence of Rajat Gupta, the School's founding Chairman . By all  accounts, he was as good a dean as he was a manager.

That Sinha is a good storyteller becomes clear from this book. The first paragraph resembles the start of a Alistair Maclean thriller: "On a damp summer day in 1998, a small column of cars pulled up at the side of the road next to a low hill in Gachibowli, about 10 miles northwest of the centre of Hyderabad. A group of people got out of the cars and stood looking at the hill,some holding umbrellas against the drizzling rain, studying the scene and talking in low voices."

 IBS  is on a low hill in Gachibowli, about ten miles from Hyderabad. “The hill was  unremarkable . Part of it was covered with scattered boulders, some of them enormous. In between the big stones there was nothing but coarse grass and a few scattered trees, among which goats browsed here and there…”

 And, getting out of cars on a damp summer day in 1998, a group of government officials and leading members of India's business community were studying the scene.

Three years later, on that same hill, the Indian School of Business opened its doors to its first students, 128 in all, the author recounts. The founding Chairman, Rajat Gupta, reminisces in the Foreword how the idea transformed from a Department of Management Studies (with a Master of Business Administration programme) at the Indian Institute of Delhi to an independent, world-class business school. As for the financial resources, he mentions the initial questions – such as, who would fund such a start-up, whether the initial funding could be raised, and more importantly, whether a sustaining financial model could be built. “The initial board members provided generous seed funding. We attracted lots of additional funding and were feeling euphoric, but the dot.com  bust put us in somewhat of a crisis…”

The author, who took charge of the project as the CEO early in 1999, narrates an incident to highlight the difference between putting together a plan and implementing it. He was a full-time consultant with McKinsey, and had undertaken the job of CEO as an additional duty. “I remember that at first I had the tendency to continue to behave like a consultant, coming up with recommendations for the board and options they might like to consider.” A moment of truth, however, was when Yogesh Deveshwar took him to one side and said, “Pramath, you are the CEO. Your job is to come to us with decisions, not to ask us to make decisions. We will provide inputs and tell you if we think you are wrong. But it is up to you to make the decisions.”

Three cities were in the shortlist for locating ISB, after an exercise to visit more than fifty locations. “All the governments were very proactive and very keen to have us in the city,” reads a quote of Arvind Pahwa. Thackeray was in favour of giving land at below local market price in Maharashtra, but the demand was for a quota for students, staff and faculty. “There is some justification in what he said, and he was passionate about developing Maharashtra. But the board needed a free hand,” recalls Deepak Parekh. And, in Karnataka, the Chief Minister offered a site with good infrastructure near the Ring Road, away from central Bangalore's infamous traffic jams, but the ISB delegation felt the price was on the high side.

Meanwhile, in Andhra Pradesh, the then Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu was determined to expedite the economic development of Hyderabad. He would call each member of the Executive Board personally, and send them a letter. And, after a breakfast with the Chief Minister, the delegation would hear him say, “Since you will be visiting other States, whatever they offer, please let me know. If they offer X, I will make it X+1.”

We have an exciting story about building a functioning institution in the field of business education, by turning barren land into a vibrant campus.

 Sinha manages to maintain the same tone and pace through the book, peppering it with anecdotes on how things progressed and on lessons learned, some of which are lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and managers.

What appeals most is Sinha's honesty. He readily accepts that ISB has succeeded beyond the expectations of its founders. And at the same time, he admits that many of the early goals are yet to be reached. This honest account adds to the charm of the book making it  eminently readable.

Talking of rankings, IIM-A is the only other Indian B-school in the FT Global MBA rankings, at No. 11,  nine slots ahead of ISB. But that is not the point. The point is: two of the world's top 20 B-schools are from India, the same number as from Spain, UK and France; China has one; the US 11. But as many experts will tell you, we need many more. With Great Lakes Institute of Management opening in Chennai, and with ISB's second campus in Mohali  we are certainly  on the way. If you want to join them, pick up this book as a first step.

The book is an excellent source of information for anyone who is involved or may get involved in setting up an institution in India. The books focusses on setting up an MBA institution but what we learn can be put to use in other areas too. Team building, conceptualisation, fund raising, regulatory issues, marketing, staffing are discussed at length with excellent examples.

It is a book that helps nicely envision the thought process went into making India's greatest management school.

PPR

27/5/2018