The best among India’s 3,280 B-schools listed in the EW league table have the potential to improve and upgrade into excellent providers of business management education , writes Dilip Thakore

It’s a typically Indian paradox. Although India hosts 3,280 business management education institutes including a few dozen which are ranked among the best worldwide, Indian industry — India Inc — is a global also-ran. Seventy-seven years after the country wrested political independence from almost two centuries of exploitative British rule — in 1947 a mere 12 percent of the population was literate and life expectancy was 31 years — despite offering the world’s largest market (pop.1.4 billion), India’s largest corporate enterprise is Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) with an annual sales turnover of $109 billion (Rs.9.1 lakh crore) followed by Life Insurance Corp at $103 billion. Against this, the annual revenue of America’s Walmart is $648 billion and Amazon’s $575 billion. In the league table of the world’s largest corporates by sales revenue, the Mumbai-based RIL is ranked #86. In this connection, it’s perhaps also pertinent to note that the market capitalization (market value of all equity shares) of Apple Inc ($3.87 trillion) is equal to India’s annual GDP.   

Although politicians of all shades and hues proclaim it a developed country, India is routinely ranked among the world’s poorest and backward nations defined by acute shortages of food, clothing, shelter, affordable healthcare and education. A recent (April 25) panel discussion at the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings 2025-26 Awards  featuring some of India’s most respected academics, which examined the topic “Why haven’t India’s 47,000 colleges and 1,168 universities produced even one game-changer product, service or disruptive technology in 77 years?”, provided no satisfactory answer.   

Obviously, this pathetic also-ran condition of India Inc and the Indian economy can’t be pinned on the country’s B-schools, although some measure of the blame for none of India’s companies being listed among the largest, most respected, competitive and innovative corporations worldwide, has to be laid at their collective door.

India’s first major B-school, the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) was established in 1961 with American funding and grudgingly permitted collaboration with the MIT’s Sloan School of Management (USA). IIM-C was soon followed by IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore.

Yet the contribution of these three premier IIMs to the national development effort remained hazy until the advent of the country’s first business magazines — Business India and BusinessWorld — made private enterprise respectable and shone a spotlight on these pioneer B-schools which despite their capital-intensive infrastructure and 100-acre campuses certified a mere 200-300 highly subsidised MBAs annually.

Suddenly, the two-year wholly residential MBA programmes of the IIMs became very popular and 250,000-280,000 candidates started writing CAT (Common Admission Test) of the IIMs whose number has since multiplied to 21 countrywide. Moreover with incremental liberalisation of the shackled Indian economy which averaged a pitiful GDP growth of 3.5 percent per annum for over 40 years, other B-schools mushroomed all over the country providing good, bad and indifferent business management education to an ever increasing number of students.

Against this backdrop in 2013, we introduced the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER). But with the IIMs dominating the initial EW B-school league tables (and all media rankings), and bearing in mind that they admit a mere 2 percent of MBA aspirants, in 2016 we stopped ranking IIMs and government B-schools and focused on ranking privately promoted institutions which admit the overwhelming majority of college graduates signing up for B-school education.

Since then, the EW league table of private B-schools has been dominated by the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad (ISB) funded in 2002 by several of the biggest names of India Inc — Ambani, Godrej, Bajaj and Rajat Gupta (McKinsey, New York) — on a 260-acre state-of-the art campus in Gachibowli, suburban Hyderabad. And over the past almost quarter century since this private B-school was promoted with a reported endowment of Rs.250 crore, ISB has built an excellent reputation for providing globally comparable business management education to its students obliged to fork out Rs.33-35 lakh for its 13-month fully residential MBA programme. In effect, this tuition fee is double that of the top IIMs which after decades of over-subidisation currently levy an equivalent fee for their two-year MBA programmes. Nevertheless, most IIMs continue to be heavily subsidized and a provision of Rs.251.89 crore has been made in the Union Budget 2025-26 for them.

According to ISB spokespersons, this huge (by Indian standards) tuition fee is justified because of its partnerships with top ranked B-schools worldwide, and its global #27 Financial Times (London) 2025 global ranking. However though its FT rank is above the premier  ABC  IIMs — IIM-Ahmedabad (#31), IIM-Bangalore (57) and IIM-Calcutta (67) —  it is pertinent to note that ISB is ranked below the China Europe International Business School (12), Shanghai University of Finance and Economics: College of Business (15), Nanyang Business School, NTU, Singapore (22), Peking University: Guanghua School of Management  (25), and Fudan University School of Management (30).

Yet despite ISB’s modest international rank, Dr. Madan Pillutla who has received the benefit of excellent education in BITS, Pilani; XLRI, Jamshedpur; University of Illinois with a Ph D from the University of British Columbia, is evidently innocent of the image building advantage ISB could derive from disseminating the B-school’s success story and future plans. As happened last year, all attempts to connect with him to elicit a few words of wisdom on institution capacity building proved infructuous.

In EW’s 2025-26 top table of India’s best private B-schools, there has been considerable rearrangement of the seating order. ISB, Hyderabad is followed by XLRI — Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur which has retained its #2 rank of last year;  the newly-promoted (2020), previously unranked  Masters’ Union, Gurugram which made a spectacular debut at #5 last year, has continued its upward trajectory to #3 (5); Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurugram is ranked #4 (3) while the S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai ranked second last year has had to cede considerable ground #5 (2).

The School of Business Management of NMIMS University at #6 (4); IMT, Ghaziabad #7 (6); T.A. Pai Management Institute, Manipal #8 (8): Institute of Health Management Research, Jaipur #8 (10), K.J Somaiya Institute of Management, Mumbai #9 (7) and Amity Business School, Noida #9 (8) are tied with Symbiosis Institute of Business, Management, Pune #9 (7) and ICFAI Business School, Hyderabad at #10 (6) complete the Top 10 table.

With typical ecclesiastical calm and fortitude, Dr. (Fr.) S. George has no complaint against having had to suffer bridesmaid status to the top-ranked ISB for the past several years in the annual EW league table of India’s best private B-schools. “I derive considerable satisfaction from the fact that ISB’s Dean is an alumnus of XSM,” says Dr. George, a highly qualified alumnus of Loyola College, Chennai, Satya Nilayam College, Chennai, XLRI-XSM, awarded a Ph D by Madras University and post-doctorate qualifications by Case Western University, USA. Dr. George, has some additional cause for satisfaction. Under the parameters of faculty welfare and development and all-important leadership, XSM has been awarded highest scores in this year’s private B-schools league table. 

“I believe the high score awarded to SXM under the faculty welfare and development parameter is well-deserved because we are only too aware that faculty is SXM’s backbone. As the oldest B-school of India established in 1949 with a focus on human resource development, we practice HRM in continuous consultation with our alumni serving with the most respected companies worldwide. Moreover, as a Jesuit, service-promoted institution, profitability is not a priority for us. We are content to invest liberally in infrastructure development and the welfare and well-being of our faculty and students,” says Fr. George, who “out of humility” declined to comment upon XSM’s top score under the leadership parameter.

Swati Ganetti, an alumna of IIT-Delhi and the Wharton School of Business (USA) who began her career in the Delhi office of US-based consulting major Bain & Co and served with several edtech start-ups prior to co-promoting Masters’ Union (MU), Gurugram with Pratham Mittal, also a Wharton alum, is delighted with this newly promoted (2020) B-school’s “continuous progress in the annual EW league table”. After a dramatic leapfrog debut into top table with a #5 rank in 2024-25, MU has risen higher in the esteem of the informed public and is ranked #3 this year with top scores under the parameters of curriculum and pedagogy and internationalism. 

“Right from the start, MU’s mission was to build a talent pipeline for the world.  So we resolved that our graduates must not only be employable in India, but anywhere worldwide. Therefore, even as undergrads, some of our students are sent abroad for immersion programmes with some of the world’s most efficient and innovative corporations such as Daiken and Nissan in Japan and Sintel and Sanofi in Singapore. Moreover during the summer vacation, they serve internships with top-ranked companies in India and abroad. In the circumstances, I am pleasantly surprised that your sample respondents have awarded us highest scores under these interlinked parameters,” says Ganetti. Currently this degree awarding B-school has 400 undergrad and 250 postgrad students mentored by 30 full-time faculty and over 200 professors of practice drawn from blue chip companies in India and abroad — the USP of this new genre, pace-setting B-school. 

Beyond the Top 10, among the private B-schools that have improved their ranking this year are the N.L. Dalmia Institute of Management Studies & Research, Mumbai ranked #15 (cf. #16 in 2024-25); Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow ranked #15 (18); Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Hyderabad ranked #15 (17); Chitkara Business School, Patiala #23 (25); Heritage  Business School, Kolkata #25 (28)  and previously unranked IBMR Business School, Gurugram and Doon Business School, Dehradun which have debuted at #59 and #66 in this year’s 127-strong league table of India’s best private B-schools.

Although somewhat overshadowed by the IIMs, India’s private B-schools are capable of responding quickly to changes in the business environment and customizing their curriculums accordingly. Thus they are discharging an increasingly important role in developing managers and executives required to rapidly modernise and upgrade India Inc to collaborate and compete with the world’s most go-getting and dominant corporations. Moreover, it’s important to note that B-schools that are modestly ranked in the national league table, are not necessarily also-rans. In their host states — some of whom are more populous than many European countries — they are highly regarded.

For instance the Jagdish Sheth School of Management (formerly IFIM), Bengaluru ranked #14 nationally is the #2 B-school of the highly industrialised ‘Silicon Valley’ state of Karnataka (pop. 65 million); Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow ranked India #15 is the #3 ranked private B-school of Uttar Pradesh (pop.215 million) after Amity B-School, Noida, and the Institute of Management of Nirma University, Ahmedabad ranked #34 nationally is #1 in Gujarat (pop.71.6 million).

Therefore, all B-schools listed in the EW league table 2025-26 need to be given high respect and encouragement to improve and upgrade into world-class institutions. This is an essential precondition of the nation achieving its Viksit Bharat and $30 trillion economy goals by 2047, the year in which India will celebrate its centenary of freedom from over 500 years of foreign rule.