Professor HimanshuRai Joins as IIM Indore’s New Director

IIM Indore’s director, Professor Rishikesha T. Krishnan today completed his tenure of five years. He handed-over the directorship today in an official ceremony to Professor Himanshu Rai—who took over as the new director.

Professor Rai in a press conference organized at the Institute noted in accordance with IIM Indore’s mission, that he aims to develop a strategy that helps the Institute create responsible leaders who remain contextually relevant. ‘We would also focus on doing research which not only is rich in content and data, but also which contributes to the society, city, state and nation as a whole. We will plan for new pedagogies and we aim to be one of the top Institute in the world in the coming years’, Professor Rai said.

Talking about Indore being the cleanest city, Professor Rai said that IIM Indore would focus on creating clean leaders, entrepreneurs and managers. ‘We look forward to working with government organizations—in betterment of the nation; with NGOs—to reform and bring about a positive change in the society; and with start-ups who are not involved with the Institute as well—to encourage young minds and support them in every way required’, he said.

IIM Indore has always been collaborating with foreign institutes. Professor Rai, while mentioning about the student exchange programme and the foreign collaborations said, ‘We are planning to have some programme scholars as residence faculty who will come, and not only teach our participants, but also collaborate with our faculty for research. As of now, one-fourth of our participants have international exposure, but we plan to make this cent percent’.

Professor Rai also discussed that IIM Indore has a good number of faculty members—however, the Institute plans on having more faculty with time. ‘We will also be focusing on strengthening MOOCs and involving foreign universities in our research. India has a lot of family businesses, however, a good amount of research about family businesses is done in Italy; and not much in India. We will collaborate with foreign universities to understand their point of view and do research based on our nation’, he said.

Professor Rai concluded saying that the aim of the Institute is to be a contextually relevant business school with world class academic standards—and that IIM Indore will consistently work towards betterment—both in academics and research, quantity and quality-wise.