Courses at IIM Ahmedabad

University, the library in front and class rooms on the right.

As I am also writing this blog for my home university and students who want to come to IIM Ahmedabad in the future, I have to tell something about the courses I chose here. All courses are graduate level, so there are many good courses to choose from and the problem is more how to fit all of them into your schedule with the least overlaps. There was no course description available when choosing the courses so it was more of a random selection in the end. Knowing what I know now, I would have chosen slightly differently as I didn't take a course that would have matched my interests perfectly. Selecting courses happened through email communication and on a first-com-first-serve basis. So, if you were slow in replying to emails or the people at the IIMA side slow in reading them, you missed your spot - happened to me too with another course.

The courses include many assignments, preparing cases and some also exams. What I have heard is that they are very easy and teachers rarely fail second year students, to which group we also belong. The workload is more than what I am used to at Aalto University, but there was still enough time to explore Ahmedabad and travel to other cities in India. For my home university I had to do 5 Indian credit points, and I ended up choosing  6 courses and doing 5.5 credits. Others do comparatively less courses and more time to do longer trips - or they just skipped classes.

1. Good governance and people living in poverty (GGPLP) with Harsh Mander - 0.75 credits
This course tried to teach us how the life of a poor person is and to make us understand the privileged life many of us studying at IIMA are living. We discussed the caste system, the difference between the urban poor and rural poor, the role of women and discrimination of the various minority groups. The teacher showed PowerPoints and talked, with some room for discussion and questions. At times the lectures were repeating themselves and the takeaway of the course can be summarized in a few words - inequality with indifference (basically, that the rich don't care about the poor) is the mayor problem of these days. There were two course assignments - we had to talk with a poor person to understand how their live is and for the other assignment we had to analyze reading material. Overall I liked the course still and now I can better guess what the possible stories are of those who sleep on the street outside the campus.

2. Transport Infrastructure (TI) with G. Raghuram- 1.00 credits
The course was very much focused on the Indian transportation system, which was interesting to some extend. Traveling around India or driving in Ahmedabad I could see the things we learned about. The professor is an expert in his field so we got to read some draft reports an comment them, he could take our output into consideration and back to the table with other stakeholders working on the draft. However, we had to do a lot for this course - case presentations, analyze reports and an issue paper. After the last class the professor took us out for dinner, so the course deserves one extra point for that.

Visit to the ice cream factory!

3. Entrepreneurship and New Venture Planning (ENVP) with Sunil Shukla and Dinesh Awasthy - 1.25 credits
The course had all the potential to be worth it, but in the end it was just a waste of time. The lectures added little value to the learning process, the readings were all very old and the business plan we had to write as the big group assignment was a pain in the ass. The exam was based on numbers and for people who have not majored in finance such an exam is very difficult. The best part was a visit to the ice cream factory of Havmor, a local ice cream producer.

4. Doing Business in India (DBI) with Anurag Agarwal, RH Dholakia and Arvind Sahay - 1.00 credits
For this course we covered the economical and political history of India to understand the current challenges and the factors that influence the Indian consumer. The course was divided into three parts - economics, marketing and legal issues - and each part was taught by a different professor. All the three were experts in their field and in their own ways good lecturers. The assessment of the first part was based on a small study we did in groups on two industries in India, the second was an assignment we did in pairs on either market entry or FDI in India, and for the last part we had to write a small quiz with only one question. This course I would recommend because what we learned here was also helpful in other courses.

5. Strategic Transformation and Change in the Indian Economy (STC) with Hans Huber - 0.75 credits
This course was taught by a German professor, and the atmosphere around the course was different - deadlines were not postponed, lectures started on time or slightly too early and evaluation was rather strict. In each class a new case was covered, and as a group assignment we had to prepare three cases. The class was about the change in the Indian economy, privatization, the role corporations play in that change and the importance of having a good strategy. The professor was very sure about his own opinion and at times it felt that he wanted to teach us his opinion on the issues covered with little room for own realizations.

6. Strategic Negotiation Skills for Leaders (SNS) with Satish Duryadham - 0.75 credits
When this course started, everyone was very excited but after a few lectures the excitement turned into frustration. It was a course about negotiations and to learn it we had to do simulations. The implementation failed as the professor tried to put too much into one lecture and each time the lectures ended way overtime. Also the cases we had to negotiate about were incomplete and some information we needed was missing. Overall, the course was not very useful to communicate the essentials of negotiating. A one-day workshop would have had the same effect.

Finally a few words about time at IIMA, scheduling of the classes and exams. Normally classes go between 8.45 and 20.30 from Monday to Saturday, but professors are relatively free to decide on possible rescheduling arrangements and then classes might be in the evening until midnight or on a Sunday. Furthermore, deadlines are easily extended - sometimes even only on a few hour notice before the initial deadline. Exams can also be rescheduled if asked for nicely. One exam had to be rescheduled due to many students traveling. Originally it was on a Saturday, but we had already our bus ticket to Udaipur and we had no intention to complete an online exam during our holiday. When asking for a possibility to do it on another date, the professor was reluctant and asked: "Is Saturday a holiday for everyone?"