The Hindu Business Line : ‘India, an exciting learning ground’

HEC Paris, Europe’s top-ranking B-school, is interested in India. “We’re looking at exciting recruitment opportunities for our students and maybe some internships too,” Bernard Ramanantsoa, Dean, HEC, told The New Manager.

Slotted at the top position by the Financial Times in its B-school rankings this year, HEC Paris already has partnerships with the Indian Institutes of Management, Ahmedabad and Bangalore, and the Indian Business School, Hyderabad, for exchange of students and faculty.

“But India offers exciting possibilities and French companies setting up subsidiaries here in India could give our students the experience they need,” he said on a recent visit to Bangalore.

HEC Paris currently offers a collaborative degree (Trium EMBA) with New York University’s Stern School of Business and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

“We’re looking at similar partnerships with Indian universities,” admitted Ramanantsoa. The B-school also intends to tap Indian industry for consulting assignments in the areas of marketing and retail.

For the last three years, HEC has been a consultant for the Indian Railways and has launched executive education programmes where top managers of the Indian Railways undergo a 4-6 week training programme on strategy and change management annually. The 16-month management programme offered by HEC Paris is based on the US model. But the diversity that European schools offer is similar to that in Indian schools, says Ramanantsoa. “The European market is not a very homogenous one and coping with diversity is tougher there than in the US.”

And, like Indian B-school graduates, HEC graduates also show a preference for jobs in banking and consulting. The course fee for the MBA programme at HEC is around 42,000 euros. However, more than 50 per cent of the students get some part of their fee subsidised through scholarships, he said.