Wharton lends hand to Indian business school

From Singapore to India, Wharton's influence is no longer constrained to the United States. For the past three years, the Wharton School has been working with the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University to develop the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India. ISB is expected to open its classroom doors for the first time next summer, and the admission process for its inaugural class is already underway. The school took a decisive step last weekend when it appointed Sumantra Ghoshal to be its founding dean. Ghoshal is currently a professor at the London School of Economics. According to Wharton Deputy Dean David Schmittlein, Wharton and Kellogg have largely held advisory roles in establishing ISB. "We and Kellogg jointly have played a role with respect to structuring the school's curriculum, its potential faculty composition, its organizational structure, those kinds of things," Schmittlein said. Wharton's contributions to ISB parallel how Wharton has worked to develop the curriculum of the Singapore Management University, a second business school in Asia. SMU accepted its first class of students this summer. Schmittlein credits the origin of ISB to Rajat Gupta, the managing director of the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. It was Gupta, Schmittlein said, who originally began tossing the idea of starting ISB around the business world. So in November 1997, then-Wharton Dean Thomas Gerrity, the dean of the Kellogg School and Gupta all signed a memorandum of understanding to symbolize their commitment to the ISB. ISB will only offer an MBA program, which Schmittlein said would last around 16 months. The campus will also contain a technology center focusing on the management and development of business technologies. About 70 percent of the students will probably be from India. Hyderabad, according to Schmittlein, is a technology hub in India and consequently a natural place to locate ISB. Marketing Professor Jagmohan Raju helped draft ISB's program of study, and noted that the curriculum was not very different from Wharton's own. But, he added, there are distinct focuses on e-commerce, entrepreneurship, analytical finance and strategic marketing. Wharton has no definite plans to directly contribute professors or financial resources to the school, Schmittlein said. ISB has been largely funded through private donors, and the state government of Andhra Pradesh -- of which Hyderabad is the capital -- helped find the school a location. But while Penn is not likely to directly supply professors, Schmittlein said he wouldn't be surprised if some faculty choose to teach at ISB as visiting professors. Yet Raju noted that while some might step up, most recognize that their "primary commitment was to the University." Though the most obvious beneficiary of the partnership is ISB, Raju and Schmittlein agreed that Wharton would also gain from the deal. "There are, of course, a variety of Penn faculty who are interested in Asia, in developing economies and in India specifically," Schmittlein said. And Raju said the ties with a campus in India would open up new possibilities for a different kind of research in Asia. "The U.S. population is relatively homogenous," he said. "India has 22 different languages, different cultures, different religions. It's really in many ways a much more diversified market." The 53-member board of directors includes numerous members of the private business sector, as well as Wharton Dean Patrick Harker. Gupta is the chairman of the board.

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