As an alternative to increasing seats in existing courses, KJ Somaiya is walking the expansion road by starting new courses. Beside short term courses, KJ Somaiya has launched a two-year Retail Management course in partnership with Pantaloon.
MMS vs PGDBA
Among the two flagship courses of KJ Somaiya, the Masters in Management Study (MMS) is a University of Mumbai recognized degree course while the Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration (PGDBA) is approved by the AICTE.
“Three to four distinctions between MMS and PGDBA are pretty clear. In the PGDBA course we admit more of engineering graduates and applicants having work experience. On the other hand in the MMS course we receive BCom passouts, entrepreneurs, CAs along with a large amount of freshers. The diversity of students we receive in PGDBA is large as they come from different parts of the country, which encourages more interaction and learning. Whereas in MMS we have a quota for Gujarati students which results in a batch that is largely local to Mumbai,” explains Mr Narasimham.
“The curriculum is different for both the courses but ultimately both of them aim at the same careers and positions. I would believe they are 80 per cent common in nature,” he adds.
No preference for Work Experience
KJ Somaiya has actively decided not to give preference to work experienced applicants for both MMS as well as PGDBA.
“Freshers have the desire and enthusiasm to perform,” says the Director General.
Delayed CET Cutoffs for MMS, Gujarati quota
Even though delayed, the college allotments under the Maharashtra CET were made on July 24. The cutoffs for KJ Somaiya IMSR closed at 158 marks for the Open Category and 181 marks for the Outside Maharashtra Category 181. The highest scorer in the Open Category at 173 marks was allotted Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies.
“The expected cut offs for the Mumbai open seats and the OMS seats depends on the CET authorities. The authorities shall decide the B-school cut offs with respect to the overall performance of students along with the number of students opting for KJ Somaiya. The selection process for MMS is not in our hands unlike in the PGDBA course. Thus the process has taken a lot of time due to which the MMS programme has been delayed from July to 15th August. The cut off for Gujarati linguistic minority quota (GLMQ) is 159 and it has already been declared,” informs the Director General.
“As many as 50 pc seats in the MMS course are reserved for linguistic Gujarati applicants. We receive about 600 applications for these 60 seats. Of the other 50 pc, around half is for reserved quotas and what remains is for the general category. The seats for open merit are approximately 28 out of 120,” elaborates Mr Narasimham.
Campus revamp, New courses
Large amount of construction work is on in full swing at K J Somaiya with restructuring taking place in the building and other embellishments being added to the rest of the campus.
“We are also building a new men’s hostel. We plan to increase the number of floors to four from the present two. One of these floors will accommodate a library,” says Mr Narasimham.
“We are now looking forward to having more specialized courses. Within management we can have specialized courses such as logistics management, retail management, IT, shipping etc. These specialized courses help train individuals according to the market requirements. We also plan to tie up with companies which would later absorb the students. This will help reduce the uncertainty and fear of employment among students to a great extent,” reasons Mr Narasimham.
KJ Somaiya’s joint venture with Pantaloon for the Retail Management course is a step in that direction, adds the Director General General.
“Instead of a having an in-house program, we have tied up with Pantaloon Retail. All students will be employed with Pantaloon after successfully completing the course. The course is approved by Pantaloon which provides us faculty, they also conduct workshops for the students. At the end of the course students are free to give up the placement at Pantaloon. Although I must make it clear that we don’t provide them with any other kind of placement,” explains Mr Narasimham.
KJ Somaiya arranges personal doubt solving sessions for students after classroom lectures under the tutorial system.
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Mr Narasimham explains, “Many times students hesitate to ask questions during lectures. In order to help them cope with their difficulties, groups of students are allotted to a professor who carries out tutorials. It is conducted like a workshop where their doubts are solved. It’s like a coaching camp. For example,engineers may not understand cost accounting that well as compared to accountants. It is to help the last person in the class to come up to the medium level.”
Placements, attempts to get more PPOs
Both MMS and PGDBA batch besides having a common student body also have a common placement committee.
“The difference between MMS and PGDBA placements lies in the students’ mind set. Most MMS students prefer jobs in Mumbai or want to join their family businesses while PGDBA students consider the brand name and don’t put much emphasis on the location of the company,” states Mr Narasimham.
“This year our average salary was approximately Rs 5 lakhs. Along with that the company profiles coming to our campus and our ranking is also improving greatly,” claims Mr Narasimham.
“Earlier most of our students preferred marketing jobs. But of late there has been a shift from marketing to other disciplines such as Operations, Systems, and Human Resources,” adds Mr Narasimham.
“There were ten students who received pre-placement offers in the last batch. We are not getting as many PPOs as IIM students do. But we are working on getting more PPOs as well as lateral placements for our students. We are planning to have a separate placement process for lateral positions. But the main concern lies in fulfilling the requirements of the companies visiting our campus,” states Mr Narasimham.
Alumni, Foreign tie-ups
“We don’t reveal much about our alumni or use our alumni to market our college. We organize events such as Milap for our alumni,” says Mr Narasimham.
According to Mr Narasimham, “In India we consider it a duty of the government to provide free education. As a result students after graduating don’t feel the need to give back to the institute. Whereas internationally, the alumni is more forthcoming and willing to contribute. It will take along time for Indian alumni to get active except in a few well-known B-schools. We have started in this direction but it will take another five to six years to reach that level.”
Although KJ Somaiya has foreign B-school collaborations, by the Director General’s own admission it has not been very active in executing them.
Mr Narasimham clarifies, “We have several tie ups with foreign B-schools like Stanford. But in reality much hasn’t been done. The reasons being firstly most of our students are middle class and they can’t afford to bear the expenditure of going there. The students don’t see this programme as immediately transferring into higher salaries or any other incentives. According to them unless they join a multinational company in the US there is no point spending so much. We are looking at other options which include trying to send our faculty.”
Mr Narasimham has a strong industry background, having worked with IDBI and IFCI at senior level posts. He has moved on to become the Director General of K J Somaiya IMSR.