1. International Programme In Management For Executives

• Nature Of Course: General management
• Institute: IIM Lucknow (Noida campus)
• Duration: 1 year
• Work Experience: 6 years
• Batch Size: 50 participants
• Fees: Rs 14 lakh (including fee for 3-4 week module at a partner institute in Europe/East Asia)

2. National Management Programme

• Nature Of Course: General management
• Institute: Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
• Duration: 1 year, excluding international component
• Work Experience: 5 years
• Batch Size: 60 participants
• Fees: Rs 6 lakh + actuals of 45-day international component in Europe

3. Executive Post-Graduate Diploma In Business Management

• Nature Of Course: General management
• Institute: Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Bangalore
• Duration: 15 months
• Work Experience: 5 years
• Batch Size: 30 participants
• Fees: Rs 6.5 lakh per year + actuals for an optional foreign component

4. Post-Graduate Diploma In Management (Executive)

• Nature Of Course: General management
• Institute: Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad
• Duration: 15 months
• Work Experience: 5 years
• Batch Size: 60 participants
• Fees: Rs 6.6 lakh per year

5. Post-Graduate Global Executive Program In Management

• Nature Of Course: General management with a global perspective
• Institute: Great Lakes Institute of Management, Manamai village (60 km from Chennai)
• Duration: 2-year part-time course; divided into 8 terms, with each term starting with a 9-day residency
• Work Experience: Average of 13 years
• Batch Size: 30-40 participants
• Fees: Rs 6 lakh plus Rs 1.5 lakh (cost of travel and accommodation for the residencies) plus Rs 1.5 lakh (international visit, optional)

6. Executive MBA Weekend Programme

• Nature Of Course: General management
• Institute: Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Lavale (near Pune)
• Duration: 30 months (classes on Saturday and Sunday, 10 am-5 pm)
• Work Experience: 5 years
• Batch Size: 50 participants
• Fees: Rs 50,000 per semester

7. Post-Graduate Programme In Business Management For Working Managers

• Nature Of Course: General management
• Institute: IIM Lucknow (Noida campus)
• Duration: 3 years (classes on Thursdays and Fridays: 6.15-9.30 pm; Saturdays: 2.30-9.30 pm)
• Work Experience: 5 years
• Batch Size: 65 participants
• Fees: Rs 1.4 lakh per year

8. Executive Post-Graduate Diploma In International Business

• Nature Of Course: General management
• Institute: Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi
• Duration: 3 years (classes on Saturdays: 3-7.30 pm; Sundays: 9 am-6 pm)
• Work Experience: 5 years
• Batch Size: 70 participants
• Fees: Rs 1.5 lakh per year

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Six years ago, Prateek Sen (name changed) was drawn to a job involving brand communication in a leading FMCG multinational. The appeal stemmed from the 21-year-old commerce graduate’s love for music. “I’d been performing for 12 years, singing for many music bands at events. I also had a contract in the UK,” he beams. In his early years in the organisation, as Sen went up the ranks, he got to work with ad filmmakers, music composers and radio stations in creating jingles. Even as his creative output at work and on-stage flourished, his ascent in his job was taking him into uncharted territory: seniority. For Sen, who was strong on soft skills but weak on management, it wasn’t a comfortable place. Often, he had no idea of what the others were going on about.

“See, I’m not a numbers guy. My strength is my creativity,” Sen laughs, as he recalls the feeling. Today, aged 27, he is two months away from a promotion that will see him, as manager, handle larger marketing budgets. What’s made the difference is a dedicated course he did in general management from the Indian Institute of Management, Indore. It was the last thing he would have considered in 2006, when he moved from Kolkata to New Delhi. Until then, his encounters with IITs and IIMs were only to perform at their festivals. But a year’s sabbatical from work—and the academic exposure—gave Prateek the wherewithal, an MBA, for the new role. Of course, the music plays on.

A basic MBA qualification, or an executive MBA (X-MBA), is becoming core to a rising manager’s growth in India, especially in large organisations. It ties in with the industry’s need for mid-level managers acquainted with management practices. “If you take the corporate ladder through which an individual moves up, he goes through various transition points,” notes Deepak Chandra, Associate Dean of the Centre for Executive Education at the Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB). “Most general management MBA programmes focus on these transition points.” It is why any executive-education portfolio in India is incomplete without the X-MBA. An X-MBA targets working professionals who don’t have a post-graduate MBA degree, and lays a strong foundation for bursts of continuous learning and open programmes thereafter.

Broadly, there are two routes to an X-MBA today. One, a full-time, residential format. Since it packs all the learning into, typically, one year, it is more rigorous and result-oriented. Two, the part-time, weekend format, where the learning is spread over two to three years. Both formats make sure that professionals don’t lose out on time away from the workplace.

On-Campus 24x7

In the residential programme, working professionals devote themselves wholly to the academic experience. Besides the IIMs, the notable residential X-MBA programmes are from ISB and Management Development Institute, Gurgaon. An X-MBA course in these institutes is, typically, for a year. “The intensity of the programme is much more than anything I have done before academically,” says Jatinder Salwan, an ex-Army officer enrolled in the International Programme in Management for Executives (IPMX) at IIM Lucknow’s sister campus in Noida.

The IPMX programme packs 22 core courses into one year. There is continuous evaluation, through 10-minute quizzes, assignments and exams at the end of each term. IIM-Lucknow, for instance, follows an academic cycle of six weeks of classes, followed by exams. Some courses have an international component, where students visit an overseas partner institute for 4-6 weeks. Most programmes conclude with a field project.

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Rupa Gurunath
Board Member, India Cements

About 18 months ago, Rupa Gurunath was drafted into the board of India Cements, promoted by her father N Srinivasan. For the 36-year-old mother of two, all this was new as she was from a computer science background. But Gurunath is coping well. First, by watching her father in action. Second, through a two-year, part-time executive MBA at the Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai. A school assignment that’s keeping her busy these days pertains to demand and supply. Interestingly, the cement industry is facing an oversupply now.

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It’s a hard grind: a studious departure from the pressures of a workplace, but essential to develop familiarity with business practices. “At the basic level, I began to know and understand management jargon,” recalls Sen. “The larger benefit is the perspectives needed for business meetings. The experience makes you confident to participate in complex discussions.”

Prior to the course, professionals have to prepare for an entrance exam, group discussion and personal interview. In essence, barring its one-year duration, it is no different from the renowned two-year MBA programme. Many conglomerates like the Essar Group and the Tata Group have an arrangement with management institutes, whereby they sponsor candidates.

Having said that, some are willing to look beyond those tie-ups for deserving candidates. Sen, for instance, sat for admission to a course in IIM Indore, unaware that his company had a tie-up with another IIM. But his organisation took into account his four-year stint with them, and supported him. “I went to my line manager and told him why I wanted to do the course,” he explains. “They sponsored almost 95% of my course fee and I’m happy here. So, there are no plans to leave my current organisation,” he smiles.

Value For Money

Sponsorship can matter for participants because of the fee involved, which is typically above Rs 11 lakh for a residential X-MBA. For rising managers like Jatin Upadhyay (name changed), the price poses a conundrum. After a decade in the industry, he heads a vertical in a medium-sized hospitality firm. He earns Rs 16 lakh annually. Taking a year’s break for a residential X-MBA means forgoing that amount. Moreover, he will have to pay Rs 11 lakh as fee for an X-MBA from a top B-school, and then some. It’s not an easy call for Upadhyay to take a knock of at least Rs 27 lakh.

“Indian industry has competent, loyal executives who, for various reasons, haven’t been able to do an MBA,” notes Professor Suresh Mony, Director, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) University in Bangalore, which offers executive education. Some could not clear the written exam, some wanted to work after graduation. “There is a pent-up demand of middle-class professionals who want to do an MBA but couldn’t, and very few institutes cater to them,” he explains.

There is a pent-up demand of middle- class professionals who want to do an MBA but couldn’t, and very few institutes cater to them.Professor Suresh Mony, Director, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies University, Bangalore

Increasingly, though, some institutes are offering X-MBA programmes for a fee that is significantly below the Rs 11 lakh norm—without compromising on the learning. So, for professionals like Upadhyay, who are particular about their return on investment, the roads lead to the likes of IMT Ghaziabad, NMIMS and Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai. The average X-MBA course fee in these institutes is Rs 6.5-7.5 lakh. “Our students tend to measure the change by how much salary they drew before and after the MBA,” says Reema Khurana, Chairperson of IMT Ghaziabad’s executive programme in management.

The average post-programme salary for the 2009 IMT batch (average age of 30 years) was Rs 10.34 lakh per annum. The highest domestic salary was Rs 15 lakh and the highest international salary was Rs 25 lakh. That is a fair indication of the capabilities of the participants, many of whom have been placed in the mid-tier of organisations.

The areas of functional specialisation and faculty to teach them are on the rise, to match up to the electives of flagship (two-year) MBA programmes. “We focus on application-oriented learning,” says Mony, referring to the application exercises in NMIMS’s X-MBA programme. “The real value is when you are able to apply the learnings to live situations in business.”

The course tenure of the NMIMS X-MBA is 15 months. Of this, three months are dedicated to a real-time project. NMIMS takes pride in business analytics being an elective in its executive programme. “All companies­­­­—pharma and FMCG—are into analytics in a big way. So, we’re looking to equip professionals with the management and analytics advantage,” says Mony.

Local Positioning Systems

Broadly, residential X-MBAs cater to working professionals who can take a one-year sabbatical. For those who can’t, the weekend programme is the way to go. These programmes are cheaper, costing around one-third to half the full-time programmes.

An active programme for working managers, who learn while they earn, has become innate to all leading management institutes. Originally, the thrust for ‘evening programmes’ was for institutes to utilise campus time and space. But their poor attendance rate in evening programmes caused two changes. One, institutes began to seriously look at the weekend-format for executive programmes. Two, these showed the interest of professionals who wanted to study.

For practical reasons, the location of institutes makes all the difference to the working folk. As a result, MDI, IMT and the IIM Lucknow-Noida campus have gained currency with young managers in the north. Similarly, a Symbiosis and Loyola assume importance for working professionals in Pune and Chennai, respectively; and, IIM Bangalore, TAPMI and NMIMS University for the pros in Bangalore.

We haven’t had to pitch the working-managers programme to corporates at all, because it attracts self-sponsored candidates.Ajay Singh, Chairman, MDP & Corporate Interaction Center at IIM-Lucknow, Noida campus

IIM Bangalore, particularly, has an intense three-year programme in software enterprise management. The rigour of this course lends itself to Facebook messages like, “…has never had such a hectic weekend before: classes and work over the weekend.” Even faculty members like Professor S Chatterjee of MDI Gurgaon rarely get Sunday off. Most institutes hold classes on Fridays and Saturdays. Still, classes on Sundays become inevitable, as they can’t cut into work hours on Fridays.

The Great Lakes two-year course falls in between a residential course and a weekend programme. It started as a six-trimester course, with two weeks in residence every trimester. After the economic slump, companies didn’t want to let off their people (senior employees) for two weeks at a stretch. It’s now eight quarters; and each quarter starts with a 9-day residency. Since it includes two weekends, a company has to be without its employee for only five days in a row. “We’ll be reacting to needs,” says Great Lakes founder and Dean Bala V Balachandran.

The other advantage of weekend programmes, pure or quasi, is the chance to put learnings into practice simultaneously. Balachandran calls his institute’s programme “experiential”. After the classroom work, students ‘take home’ assignments that are integrated with their company’s own issues and working. In that sense, they aren’t academic. These assignments, Balachandran says, help in 100% knowledge conversion.

Since most institutes don’t take responsibility for placements in weekend programmes, professionals pursue these courses at a time in their career when they hold a stable job. “We haven’t had to pitch this programme to corporates at all, because it attracts self-sponsored candidates,” says Professor Ajay Singh, Chairman, MDP & Corporate Interaction Center at IIM-Lucknow’s campus in Noida. Its working-executives post-graduate program (WMP) costs Rs 1.8 lakh per year.

Does it offer value? “If it is not a ‘full MBA’, we will not offer it,” says Professor Amit Mookerjee, Chairperson, WMP at IIM-Lucknow Noida, referring to the bent towards rigour and results. “Why take in 60 students and do the entire credit and classroom contact hours of our two-year, full-time MBA, and put in so much faculty time if it doesn’t have value?” he says, having completed two WMP batches since 2005.

The WMP programme comprises nine terms spanning three years. A student must complete four course credits per trimester—or, 36 course credits in three years. There are two weeks of examination per year. “We have students of three years of industry experience at the managerial level,” says Mookerjee.

The institute seeks a no-objection certificate from employers. “Don’t mess up both your work-life and higher education,” says Mookerjee. “If the professional is established and has the company’s support, then we are interested in the candidate.” Such courses have also attracted vice-president level participants who want to fill gaps in their experience (typically, experienced engineers who are being groomed for higher positions). Because of the work pressure, some fail to strike a balance and quit. Caving in is also made easier by the part-time nature of the weekend programme and its lower cost.

Still, the X-MBA is more accessible and popular in India than ever before. The profile of the class too is changing: “When we started, it was 100% corporate sponsored,” says Balachandran of Great Lakes. “Today, there’s a growing trend of self-financed candidates, both salaried and entrepreneurs.” They can make a choice based on the time and money they have.