IIMB launches PhD programme in entrepreneurship

Bengaluru: Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) has launched a doctoral programme in Entrepreneurship, leveraging its expertise in mentoring and incubating entrepreneurs and start-ups.

The PhD programme in Entrepreneurship aims at providing an impetus to the increasing need for scholarly research in entrepreneurship and to create a vibrant pool of faculty specialising in that domain, said Professor Rejie George Pallathitta, Chairperson, Fellow Programme in Management (FPM) at IIMB.

The FPM is IIMB's doctoral programme. India is an emerging hub for entrepreneurship and over the years, entrepreneurship has had its share of ups and downs, with many sectors potentially facing uncertainties of the unknown, IIMB said. Pegged as a significant initiative that would redefine India's business and job ecosystem, entrepreneurship demands extensive research to aid a better understanding of the different cultures that it has given rise too, with implications on business performance and sustenance of incomes, it said in a release here.

It said while there is a lot of discussion on how entrepreneurship is going to disrupt the future, there is a still a paucity of rigorous research on the subject.

Prof K Kumar, Chairperson, Academic Programmes at the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) and senior faculty at IIMB said, there is also a strong movement the world over to incorporate entrepreneurship as part of the curriculum of general and mainstream education.

IIMB is the first management school in the country to offer an FPM with a specialisation in entrepreneurship, he said.

He said IIMB has deep academic expertise in entrepreneurship, faculty who are active researchers in the field of entrepreneurship, who bring state-of-the-art knowledge to impact the practice of entrepreneurship through its education and incubation programmes.

At IIMB, the doctoral programme takes typically five years to complete, the first two years being for coursework. IIMB is in close proximity to some of the leading corporate houses in the country, ranging from information technology to consumer product companies, it noted.

Additionally, IIMB has established its own incubating centre NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL). At present, NSRCEL incubates 18 start-ups - the largest number for an incubation centre in an academic institution, it said, adding, 100 plus ventures are supported by the centre and 15,000 plus entrepreneurs are engaged, with 4,500 plus jobs created so far.