Era Business School Dwarka: What it Takes to Make a Top B-School

India is burgeoning in the B-School arena. The country has over 5,000 institutes offering MBAs currently with many more waiting in the wings. Rashmi Bharana, Member on the Governing Board of Era Business School Dwarka and EBS Director, Dr. Sanjiv Marwah, talk about what it takes to make a B-School achieve success and stand out in terms of delivering results.

To begin with, a B-School needs to follow best practices. “EBS is anchored by the billion dollar Era Group. By sheer inheritance of being a part of Era Group, we have the corporate reach, interface advantage, a hi-tech campus, and most importantly, we have ensured an experienced faculty that is renowned for its pedagogy. The added advantages include regular weekly industry interfaces. EBS Dwarka has a tie up with Dale Carnegie to provide a certification course for our students in communication and presentation. Also very importantly, EBS methodology of teaching is case based,” says Dr. Marwah.

The Era Group felt the need for quality B-Schools quite intensely when they scouted for talent. “There was an acute shortage,” says Dr. Marwah. “Era found there was room to groom more Management talent.” The yawning gap had to be filled. But the key, here, was quality. It all fell into place when Rashmi Bharana returned from her MBA programme in Singapore. She was exposed to the best B-School practices and helped implement the EBS Blackboard. It takes care of the complete online academic functioning of EBS.

However, when the Era Group began setting up their B-School, Ms. Bharana found the challenges she faced were many. “One challenge was that the ‘MBA’ was losing its charm as we entered this educational field. And the other was the increasing number of B-Schools. Attracting the right student pool had been a big challenge.” During those early days, the students that chose to get their MBA from EBS were a set of risk takers. They knew the institute was backed by a huge corporate house, and were willing to take the calculated risk of being educated at EBS.

The B-School delivered. Its 2011 batch has been completely absorbed by the industry. “We carry out satisfaction surveys for our students. The scores EBS gets are high. They find the efforts we put in are far more than other institutes do,” Prof. Marwah says. EBS Dwarka follows one rule – no shortcuts. And that rule has worked. “We are here to provide quality education.”

In fact, when they first opened EBS Dwarka, they were a little curious about why a student would come opt for an education here as opposed to the other older institutes. Pat came the reply from a student who had done his research. “Your school is new, but the faculty and infrastructure are amazing, the fee is reasonable. Everything is perfect.” Which, really, is the bottom line.