Is Chandigarh becoming an MBA hub?

Is Chandigarh becoming the new Mecca for the managers of tomorrow? With nearly 40,000 engineers and 150,000 other graduates passing out every year from more than 200 engineering institutes and colleges in the Chandigarh region, the number of students taking the CAT, GRE and GMAT has dramatically shot up.

Nationwide, in 2009, about 250,000 students appeared for the Common Admissions Test (CAT) that would help them get into management institutes, including the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). The figured dropped in 2010 to 205,000. In Chandigarh, about 12,000 took the CAT in 2009 and 10,500 in 2010. So approximately 5-6 % of the total number of students taking the CAT from all over the country, are from the Chandigarh region.

In the decade since 1998, the number of students taking the CAT from here has jumped from 1,800 to a whopping 14,500. Academies that coach students to take competitive examinations, like Bulls-Eye, Career Launchers and Professional Tutorials, to name a few, are also flourishing. Bulls-Eye, which prepares students for the CAT, now has three centres in the Chandigarh capital region, and enrolled over 4,000 students last year.

“More than a 100 students on an average, from Chandigarh, have been receiving calls from IIMs across the country every year. If you compare it to cities like Nasik which are double the size of Chandigarh, this is significant. Students from Nasik, for last few years, has not received more than 2-3 calls annually,” says Hirdesh Madan, founding Director of Bulls-Eye. He says about 35-40 students from his institute receive calls from the IIMs every year. With three new IIMs (Raipur, Ranchi and Rohtak) added to the list, the number of seats on offer will increase, too.

The demand for management among Chandigarh’s students points to a sociological u-turn. From engineering and then IT, which were preferred career options a decade ago, students are now gravitating towards management as a more lucrative option. “Most jobs today are in the services sector. Banks and insurance companies are growing at a phenomenal rate, and require people at both the entry and middle management levels,” says Bulls-Eye’s Madan. Today students are no longer interested in government jobs.

Both youngsters and their parents are now looking IIM-wards. Shweta Gupta sees herself as a successful entrepreneur in future. This year’s CAT was her second shot at management, and she is anxiously waiting for the results to be announced in January. “Once you have an MBA degree, your standing in society goes up,” she says. “For our parents, too, it is something to be proud of and brag to relatives about. It’s not enough to do just engineering any more. One must also have an MBA degree.”

The infrastructure also helps. Unlike Delhi, where students have to commute over long distances to reach their coaching centres, everything in Chandigarh can be accessed in under 40 minutes. This may have encouraged more students to enroll in the coaching institutes. Also, with smaller B-schools coming up in nearby towns like Banur and Abhipur, which are 10-12 km from Chandigarh, students who fail to make it to the top management institutes schools, can now opt for those closer home.

Source: The Economic Times, December 28, 2010