Overview

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM Bangalore or IIMB) is a reputed business school and an Institute of National Importance located in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Founded in 1973, it was chronologically the third in the first generation of IIMs to be established, after IIM Calcutta and IIM Ahmedabad, thereby forming the elite Indian B-School trio colloquially known as 'ABC', or 'IIM A/B/C'. IIMB was established by the Government of India (GoI) as an institute of excellence for education, training, research, and consulting in the field of management, and allied areas of knowledge. The Indian government called on IIMB to assist and mentor the two newly established IIMs during their inception period - IIM Trichy in 2011, and IIM Visakhapatnam in 2015. IIMB offers bachelor's, master's, PG diploma, PG certificate fellowship, and doctoral programmes in business administration, business analytics, digital business, entrepreneurship, management, public policy, administration, and corporate governance. The institute also offers Executive Education programmes for corporates, entrepreneurs, government officials, and non-profit organisations. The two-year PGP and one-year EPGP, MBA in general management are the flagship programmes of the institute. == History == === Founding === In 1972, a committee headed by Ravi J. Matthai, first director of IIM Ahmedabad and co-founder of IRMA, noting the rising demand for graduates of the first two IIMs (namely, IIMC and IIMA), recommended the need to have two more IIMs. The new IIM was to be set up at Bangalore, and for the proposed institute, the Government of Karnataka offered 105 acres (42 ha) of land (free of cost), and a contribution of INR 3 million (~US$ 390,000 in 1972). Ultimately, on 27 March 1972, the IIMB Society was officially registered in Bangalore under the Mysore Societies' Registration Act. The prominent Indian banker T.A. Pai, the Ex-Chairman of Syndicate Bank and Life Insurance Corporation, accepted to be the first Chairperson of the IIMB Board of Governors, and N.S. Iyer Ramaswamy, the then director of NITIE Mumbai, was appointed as the first Director of the institute. The institute was inaugurated by Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, on 28 October 1973 at the Ravindra Kalakshetra in Bangalore. And, though it was not a legally-binding mandate from the Indian government, the first director tried to mold IIMB to cater to the needs of govt-owned entities like PSUs/PSEs, utility corporations, etc. due to his own left-leaning persuasions. === Early years === The institute started operations in the campus of St. Joseph's College of Commerce, and some other buildings rented on the Langford Road in the city. The institute's first activity was a three-day conference in 1973, on urban development and management, which invited officials from all municipal corporations in Karnataka. Thereafter, IIMB started conducting Management Development Programmes (MDPs) and Organisation Based Programmes (OBPs) for public (govt.) sectors like power, irrigation, health, etc. The first PG management course (called PGP) started in 1974, and the first doctoral course (called FPM) started in 1976. The institute held its first convocation on 10 July 1976 with a total of 48 graduating students, and on the same day the board also announced the appointment of architects for designing the official campus. On 27 November 1978, the 'Guddalipooja' (groundbreaking) ceremony of the campus on Bannerghatta Road was performed. In 1979, the institute started separate sections for sector-wise PGP courses, and in 1980 the first fellowship diploma (FPM) was awarded. IIMB moved operations to its own campus in 1983. === Crisis and reforms === The government sectors and entities did not show interest in IIMB's initiatives, and even by the 1980s, the institute could only get marginal success. Moreover, the employee union had co-opted external political leadership unconcerned with the institute's vision leading to severe dysfunction, and then resignation of the Director in mid-1983. Thereafter, for two years IIMB had no permanent Director, and further stagnated. The faculty was also split into 'sectoral' and 'business management' wings which had severe disagreements with each other. Thus, the institute encountered a period of serious crisis, administratively, and identity-wise. Finally, Joe Philip was appointed by the board on the 15 April 1985 with a clear mandate to bring back discipline and morale to the institute. He had previously worked as VP (HR) at The Oberoi Group, and had experience in dealing with manpower issues. He believed in Management by objectives (MBO), and under his charge, IIMB also started shifting away from its 'state-corp' focus. During his tenure PGP courses were redesigned, student intakes increased, faculty workloads modified, and performance assessments formalised. The sector-wise sections were also discontinued by 1986. The almost-dead FPM course was resuscitated by changing it from being sector-focussed to business management areas. He was also instrumental in IIMB partnership with the European Commission EFMD to initiate the faculty development programme in 1988-89. Importantly, in August 1990, he was also able to wrest control of the Director's office from the union's illegal occupation after more than six years. === Growth === Dr. K.R.S. Murthy was appointed the Director on 11 February 1991 and remained till 28 February 1997. His tenure coincided with the economic liberalisation in India, and is mainly credited for driving the institute towards excellence. The PGP curriculum was further revised in 1991-92 to align it with global MBA programs. For manufacturing industries, a Management Program for Technologists (MPT) was started for mid-level engineers in 1992, along with another short-term program for senior executives in collaboration with MIT Sloan. IIMB became the first Indian B-School to have internet on campus (via ERNET) in December 1995, within four months of national internet launch. In 1996, the management icon Dr. Henry Mintzberg selected IIM Bangalore over other Indian B-Schools as one of the five international founding-members of the IMPM Consortium. In 1998, the DoPT (GoI), in partnership with UNDP, selected IIMB to setup a Centre for Public Policy (CPP) which ultimately came up in July 2000. The institute got considerable endowment from an alumnus in 1999 to power-up the NSRCEL incubation centre. The reforms and developments brought a successful turnaround, and wider recognition. In 2000, the Business Today magazine ranked IIMB the 1st in India in their BT-Cosmode Top 100 B-Schools survey. In 2003, The Wall Street Journal included IIMB among the top-100 B-Schools globally, in the unranked list of Next 50 B-Schools. India's key IT entity, NASSCOM, selected IIMB in 2005 for the Best India IT User Award in the education category. As of 2024, IIM Bangalore was the only Indian B-School in GNAM, an international collaboration convened by the Yale School of Management. == Motto and logo == The official motto of the institute is the Sanskrit phrase तेजस्वि नावधीतमस्तु, and was adopted in the session 1991-92. It is pronounced as [t̪eːɟəsvi nɑːvəd̪ʰiːt̪əməst̪u] as per the IPA phonetic transcription; and is romanised (with diacritics) as tejasvi nāvadhītamastu as per the IAST, ALA-LC, UNRSGN, and ISO 15919 standards, or as tejasvi naavdhiitamastu as per the ASCII schemes of ITRANS and Velthuis both. It is a Sanskrit Shloka extracted from the Shanti Mantra invocated in the Taittiriya Upanishad, and the Katha Upanishad, two of the constituent texts of the Yajurveda. The motto translates to "Let our study be enlightening". The IIMB's official logo is a depiction of the top-half of a blazing sun with stylised rays prominently emanating from it. The image is in the style of a negative space picture with intense red colour in the background of rays (as half-disc), while the sun, rays, and other space in logo are in white colour (or empty). The text 'IIMB' is written in black (in a sans-serif font) in the centre of the depicted sun, and the Sanskrit motto is written in black (in Devanagari script) below the sun. It was designed by the National Institute of Design, and has been in use since 1994. The hue of the red colour used in the logo is also used as the de facto official colour of IIMB for all practical purposes, often matched with white, grey, or black. A celebratory logo for short-term special-use was designed by the institute to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of its establishment. It was released on the 28 December 2022, before the beginning of Golden Jubilee celebrations scheduled in the academic session 2023-24. It was used for specific purposes and events marking the semicentennial occasion, like the special postal cover released by the India Post, and the Golden Jubilee Week events from 26 to 29 October 2023. == Campus == IIMB's main campus is located on the Bannerghatta Road in Bilekahalli suburb in the southern part of the metro-city of Bangalore. It occupies an area of around 105 acres, and has a non-urban feel with ample greenery. As of 2024, IIMB was setting up a 110 acres-large second campus 20 km away near Jigani, in the city's periphery, in Anekal Taluka of the Bangalore Urban district. The campus is accessible by private or public transport from anywhere in the city via bike, car, taxi, or bus. A nearby bus-stop named 'IIMB' is served adequately by the BMTC, and is 13 km from the central Kempegowda (Majestic) Bus Station which offers intra-city, inter-city, and inter-state bus services. The campus is ~13 km from KSR City Junction, ~13 km from Cantt. Railway Station, and ~44 km from Kempegowda International Airport. An 'IIMB' named metro station on the Namma Metro's Pink Line is planned to be launched in September 2025 (with 'Phase-I' as per 2024-Q2 updates on the project). === Architecture === The design of IIMB campus was led by the famous architect B.V. Doshi, , the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, RIBA 2022 Royal Gold Medal recipient and Padma Bhushan awardee. He had worked with the pioneering Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier in Paris, and had also later assisted the renowned Estonian-American architect Louis Kahn, in designing IIMA buildings. He had also founded and designed the renowned School of Architecture in 1966. His firm, the erstwhile M/s Stein, Doshi, & Bhalla, aided by M/s Kanvinde & Rai, was commissioned to design the campus of the newly established institute. The design was inspired by the 16th-century historic city of Fatehpur Sikri near Agra, and the 13th-century Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, along with the lush gardens of Bangalore, also known as the Garden City of India. The first director, N.S. Ramaswamy, had asked Doshi to create a campus to reflect the ethos of the Bangalore city - "green and alive [sic]". Light and Environment were the cornerstones of the poly-nuclear design concept, a hybrid of Indian traditional architecture and principles of Team 10 modernists. The notable architectural elements include the multi-storeys-high passageways, trellises, open quadrangles with ample area for greenery, sunlight streaming in through the pergolas, semi-open corridors, geometrical roofs, rough texture finish, and Kota-stone flooring. An interplay of walls-n-openings, lights-n-shadows, and solids-n-voids changes the character of the main building during different times of the day, and during different seasons. The 54,000 sq-m original complex is built in combination of hand-chipped granite stonemasonry, and exposed concrete. The campus design began in 1977, and the construction of buildings was finished in 1983. The greening effort started later in 1991, and by the 2020s the campus had a green cover of 62 acres with around 30,000 trees, and 50+ ground re-charge wells. Subsequent newer buildings, like the 6,500 sq-m New Classroom Complex, were designed by Sanjay Mohe and P.N. Medappa of Mindspace Architects. The IIMB campus design has won accolades over the years. The 'T' (Style Magazine) of The New York Times ranked IIMB campus 17th in their list of The 25 Most Significant Works of Post War Architecture. When Dezeen asked the thirteen leading Indian architecture firms to list their favourite building, the IIMB campus was the only building on the list to be chosen by two of them, calling it "the most influential piece of (Indian) modern architecture". The famous architectural historian and critic William J.R. Curtis labelled the IIMB campus as a "model" for educational institutions. The institutional project also finds mention in the citation of the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize