Dr. Amit Bhadra is the Dean of the Faculty of Business Management, GITAM (Deemed to be) University.He has immense experience in both industry and academia spanning more than 40 years. He has worked with leading companies such as Asea Brown Boveri, Crompton Greaves, Bharat Bijlee Ltd. and the Indian express Group. like Microsoft, Indian Express, and Bharat Bijlee. Throughout his academic career, Dr. Amit Bhadra has worked with various prestigious organizations like the ICFAI Group, the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, and NMIMS. He acquired his PhD in Business Administration from Pacific University Udaipur and completed his PGDM from IIM Bangalore.

GITAM Visakhapatnam

You held key positions at various prestigious institutions throughout your career. What is that one thing that made you excited and walk with GITAM in the journey?

I have been observing GITAM since 2005, it is not new to me. It is one of the premier value-based universities in India. It's named after Mahatma Gandhi and there's no question in my mind that the university lives up to his higher ideals. I have been associated with it for almost 2 years. It is a very fine institution with visionary leaders. Its programs are current, contemporary, and relevant. I think the GITAM is very much aligned with my personal value systems. I was very happy to accept and that is how I joined GITAM and that is the reason.

What motivated you to pursue a career in academia and leadership in management?

I was in the industry for 20 years. From an early stage of my career I have been in leadership positions. , I had a good track record in executive positions, but I wanted to be a part of the knowledge industry. received an invitation from ICFAI to join a division for executive education. I took up that position, and that started my career in academia. At that time, the Chhattisgarh government came up with the first Chhattisgarh state private universities act, and ICFAI wanted to set up a university, so they asked me to take up this project. Although it was not exactly what I was looking for, the idea of setting up a university was very exciting. We set up a university, which was the sixth private university in India, in Chhattisgarh and in Raipur, and then we set up a multi-campus.

As a Dean of - GITAM School of Business, what do you feel is the USP or what are the differentiating factors that make GITAM stand out from other Business schools?

We have six differentiators. Most education institutions focus on teaching academics, at least for business schools, I think it must go beyond that. First, academic excellence is fundamental. Our focus on academic excellence has enabled us to build a good faculty-to-student ratio of 1:22. Second, it is not just about knowledge, but also about skills. It is not only about what you know but also about what you can do with it. The third is careers and placements. We offer a lot of career guidance, not only for placement but also for higher education, careers in the civil service, banking, and corporate jobs.

Fourth, is industry outreach. Our students are our product, and the industry is our customer. Our students should be industry ready. Five is Internationalisation. The whole world is globalizing; all top companies are globally connected. You have to know what is happening in other parts of the world. The different ways of doing things, the different cultures, the different methods, the different challenges. Our sixth pillar is research and innovation. How do I take all this forward? How do I remain current? How do I know what is currently happening? This is possible through research and innovation.

How do you stay current with the latest trends and developments in the field of business and incorporate them into the curriculum and programs offered by the school?

We have subscriptions to some very good research databases, like Scopus. Wesubscribe to case repositories including Harvard Business Publishing and IIM Ahmedabad Case Library. Every course has at least four to five case sessions. Our research output has been growing at a rate of 25% over the last three years. When we do research, they know what is happening and that improve the knowledge available, keeping our knowledge current. 

How well is GITAM focusing on maintaining industry relationships with companies in order to leverage them for live projects, training, and placements for the students?

We organize industry visits for students. We also have industry professionals coming and teaching special classes. We also have students prepare projects for industry, research projects, and consultancy projects. To date, we have taken on many research and consultancy projects from industry. They come to us, and we work for them or consult for them. This way, both the corporations and the students gain from this experience.

How do you plan to leverage technology and online platforms to enhance the delivery of business education and adapt to changing educational landscapes?

We have an LMS platform where we upload a lot of learning resources for students to access. It's a learning platform where we upload evaluations, ratings, attendance, and labs. These can be used to do advanced analytics. We also have our FinTech lab, which teaches students finance, and how to use analytics to improve business decisions. A lot of technologies are used for communication skills, improved decision-making, analytics, and understanding databases. We have modern and state-of-the-art computer laboratories with more than 200 computers.

What are the challenging part of being in the Dean of business school role and how do you handle them?

The biggest challenge that B-schools face is student motivation. Students don't engage in the classroom. It may be because their parents have forced them to join the course, but they are not interested in doing it. So, student empathy is the biggest challenge in the education field. How you improve student engagement is the biggest challenge, and the way we are addressing the challenge is to not make them passive consumers. That's the worst thing you can do. Imagine if I were to be asked to sit in a class for five hours, and somebody came and gave me lectures, made notes, and wrote exams. I have to put myself in the shoes of that student. It is our responsibility to make the process engaging for the students.

Can you describe what is the significance and support GITAM provides for entrepreneurship and innovation?

At GITAM, we have a program for all first-year students called VDC 111. Every year, first-year students take that course. Every semester, we come up with 30 or 40 outstanding projects that they have conceptualized during that course. We have a competition for that where we give awards for outstanding projects. We also surface ideas, recognize them, reward and even offer incubation. It is a very big initiative of GITAM GITAM, is not part of any other business schools.