Infopark, Kochi on Google Earth
The Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Kozhikode is going to be starting a new campus in Kochi later this year for delivering its Executive Post Graduate Programme (EPGP). The campus, for now, will be situated at Infopark, a technology park, which already boasts of companies such as TCS, Cognizant, Wipro, Etisalat DB Telecom, etc in its premises.
According to an IIM-K spokesman, classes at the new campus will commence by September or October 2012. As of now, the school will only deliver its EPGP programme from Kochi. When asked for the reason behind moving the EPGP away from the main campus at Kozhikode, the reply was that Kochi worked better by way of logistics and connectivity. Kochi has many more flights going to and fro and is more of a corporate place than Kozhikode. Incidentally, Kozhikode also has an airport, which is some 30 kms away from the IIM-K campus and is also well connected via flights, though not as well as Kochi,” the spokesman told PaGaLGuY.
The new campus will be entirely funded by the IIM-K and no help has been sought from the Kerala government. The move to shift the executive classes there came after months of discussions on the subject including with aspiring EPGP students. The consensus was that Kochi appealed much more than Kozhikode to executive students. The shift is part of our long distance vision of expanding and building a larger base, said the spokesman.
Situated in the midst of IT companies, the content and instruction in IIM-Ks new campus will also be IT related. The Infopark campus will have its own dean in place, though the IIM-K director will call the final shots. A portion of the IIM-K faculty will be stationed at the new campus while the rest of the faculty will be shared between the main campus and the Kochi campus.
IIM Lucknow had similarly started its Noida campus in 2005 to offer executive education and extend its reach to a more corporate-friendly city.
Classes at IIM-K’s Kochi campus will be held inside a large portion of a building which houses other companies as well. The buildings in the park are massive so even taking over a part of a structure means a lot of space, the spokesman added. The new campus will have classrooms, a library and seminar rooms.
The classrooms will accommodate a couple of hundred students, the spokesman added. A decision on changing the fees of EPGP will be taken before the new batch signs in.
In addition to EPGP, IIM-Ks social reach programme which is a move to include the socially-disadvantaged into the mainstream and empower them will also be moved to the Kochi campus.
According to IIM-K, the facility at Infopark will be of a temporary nature and talks are being held with the Kerala government for a separate campus in Kochi itself. This new campus will be built in a style and function similar to the existing one at Kozhikode.
Infopark, which was set up by the Kerala government in 2004 is spread across 100 acres. Already, more than a 100 companies have set up headquarters or branch offices and about 18,000 employees work there. The Infopark itself is also on an expansion spree and work is on to add another 160 acres to the existing land.
The spokesman added that the new campus will not halt all new activity at the main campus in Kozhikode. A new complex with 120 rooms, which will be better than rooms in a 5-star hotel, is to come up shortly, he added.