The Higher Education Review

Acharya Bangalore Business School (ABBS) is a pioneering management education institute that has been able to develop into a trend-setter in the Indian higher education realm. By combining theoretical education with practical training, ABBS has also been able to nurture inspired learners that are capable of contributing to the betterment of the entire society. Spearheading the institute's operations is H.R.Venkatesha who is the director of the B-school and under his guidance; ABBS has been able to grow into a globally recognized B-school that stands for excellence.

Empowering Students for Future
"The inception idea behind the establishment of the ABBS was to create a B-School that can bring a change in the society and to create entrepreneurs of tomorrow. We also want to create business leaders who can run a business organization in a professional manner and at the same time, nurture good human beings who can be useful to the society. This helps us to create students that are socially sensitive and every one of our MBA students do a project called Socially Relevant Project (SRP) where students will go to various NGOs and similar organizations and take a social problem and find a solution for it.

This is not there in the University curriculum but we have made this mandatory in our institute. After submitting this report to me, the students will also do presentations about this too. Also, many of these social problems are great business opportunities for our students to start their enterprises. We also have a very cosmopolitan culture and we are ahead of the curve which helps us to offer the best education to our students. We were also accredited by NBA 10 years back itself when many b-schools didn't have one. Now, we have NAAC accreditation and an International Accreditation

Council for Business Education(IACBE) accreditation as well. We have MOUs not only with business organizations but also with Indian and International educational institutions including Rennes Business School, France, Sun-way University, Malaysia, and Virginia Tech University, USA to name a few. We also have many of our faculty who did their higher education in various international educational institutions", affirms, H.R.Venkatesha, when asked about the motivation behind the establishment of ABBS and its uniqueness.

This innovative and forward-thinking approach of the institute has also helped ABBS to offer wholesome education for the holistic development of their students. The institute also acknowledges the fact that businesses are now looking at the skillsets of the students and ABBS train their students on emerging areas including business analytics, and advanced excel among many others to make them job-ready. This helps the institute to differentiate them-selves from the other B-schools in the country.

“The inception idea behind the establishment of the ABBS was to create a B-School that can bring a change in the society and to create entrepreneurs of tomorrow”

ABBS also ensures that their students are doing at least one MOOC program during their time at the institute which will help the students to gain a competitive edge in the job market. The institute also hand-holds their students to excel and they make students ready for the corporate world by equipping them with the required set of skills needed to thrive in the modern-day corporate realm.

Bridging the Industry-Academia Gap
ABBS acknowledges the fact that management education is experiential education and to offer this to their students, the university syllabus is just 30 percent of ABBS's entire curriculum while 70 percent of their student's learning comes from outside the classrooms. ABBS has also created an impressive faculty base of which, many have worked in the industry and this along with their unique

curriculum helps them to bridge the industry academia gap. ABBS engages in a plethora of management development programs and apart from this, the B-school also does a lot of consultancy services for both government and private organizations including offering consultancy services to IPRITI which is a government research organization. ABBS also has regular industry-institute interactions and they have also created an initiative called reverse mentoring which has also been well received on the campus.

While talking about the research and entrepreneurial activities as well as the future aspirations of Acharya Bangalore Business School, H.R.Venkatesha says, "We have been publishing our own in-house research journal called ABBS Management, Business and Entrepreneurship Review for the last 11 years. I also encourage our students to publish research articles and we also have a Research Centre that offers Ph.D. programs for students. We have built an ecosystem in our institute that dedicates a lot of time and effort towards research-oriented education.

We have an entrepreneurship cell and this has been helping our students to bring life to their business ideas and we also work with various entrepreneurship bodies and organizations. We also imbibe the spirit of entrepreneurship among our students and we help our students to follow their entrepreneurial dreams. Going forward, we want to be known for nurturing top-notch corporate leaders in the world especially in the field of supply chain logistics and analytics. We aim to be in the top 25 B-schools that offer supply chain logistics and analytics programs in the world and from the next academic year onwards, we are starting a new MBA program in Business Analytics".

H.R.Venkatesha, Director
Venkatesha has been the guiding light behind the successful journey of ABBS's Management programs. And he has been constantly striving to develop modern-day entrepreneurs that can make a name for themselves in the global corporate realm.