Indian Institutes of Management - History

History

After India became independent in 1947, the Planning Commission was entrusted to oversee and direct the development of the nation. India grew rapidly in the 1950s, and in the late 1950s the Commission started facing difficulties in finding suitable managers for the large number of public sector enterprises that were being established in India as a part of its industrial policy. To solve this problem, the Planning Commission in 1959 invited Professor George Robbins of the University of California to help in setting up an All India Institute of Management Studies. Based on his recommendations, the Indian government decided to set up two elite management institutes, named Indian Institutes of Management. Calcutta (known as Kolkata now) and Ahmedabad were chosen as the locations for the two new institutes.

The institute at Calcutta was established first, on November 13, 1961, and was named Indian Institute of Management Calcutta or IIM Calcutta. It was set up in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management, the government of West Bengal, the Ford Foundation and the Indian industry. The institute at Ahmedabad was established in the following month and was named Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Like MIT Sloan in the case of IIM Calcutta, Harvard Business School played an important role in the initial stages of IIM Ahmedabad.

In 1972, a committee headed by Ravi J. Matthai took note of the success of two established IIMs and recommended the setting up of two more IIMs. Based on the committee's recommendation, a new IIM was established in Bangalore (IIM Bangalore) the next year, and was originally intended to cater exclusively to the needs of public sector enterprises. In 1981, the first IIM Review Committee was convened to examine the progress of the three existing IIMs and to make recommendations. The committee noted that the three IIMs were producing around 400 PGP graduates every year and that they had reached their optimum capacity. It proposed the opening of two more IIMs to meet the rising demand of management professionals. It also recommended expanding the Fellowship programmes to meet the growing demand of faculty in management schools in India. The fourth IIM (IIM Lucknow) was established in 1984 based on the committee's recommendation.

Two more IIMs were established in Kozhikode (IIM Kozhikode) and Indore (IIM Indore) in 1996. Since 2007, seven new IIMs have been set up, taking the total number of IIMs to 13.