Indian Institute of Management Udaipur hosted the inaugural ceremony of the tenth batch of its One Year MBA - Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM) program and the third batch of its One Year MBA - Digital Enterprise Management (DEM), for academic year 2022-23.

The ceremony was presided over by Prof. Janat Shah, Director IIM Udaipur and Prof. Rajesh Agrawal, Chairperson One-year MBA Program Committee. Mr. Kamesh Mullapudi, Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting (US-India) and Mr. CP Gurnani,  CEO & Managing Director, Tech Mahindra honoured the ceremony as the chief guests for the respective inaugurations.

In his welcome address, Prof Janat Shah, Director, IIM Udaipur, said, "Due to Covid , it is for the first time in two years that I am welcoming you all to the offline sessions  this year . It's a pleasure to be back in the classroom; face-to-face learning will always be the dominant teaching mode for a premier management institute like us.”

He added: “Our institute has completed ten years of a transformational journey. Since the beginning, we have envisioned an institute of global repute with a high standard of integrity, transparency, global recognition, international rankings, consistency, and an overall commitment to excellence. One of the important pillar of IIMU is its research focus.  For an academic institution, knowledge creation is significantly important, and the future will be a research-driven world. We, as an institute, want to be at the frontier of academic research. We have created a distinct identity in research by consistently ranking number 4, for three years, in UT Dallas business school research ranking of Indian b-schools. We have an ambitious Vision 2030, where we want to rank in the UT Dallas top 100 rankings, where currently there is no institute from our country.”

He further added, " IIMU has focused on being a distinct institution, and the Digital Enterprise Management Centre of Excellence as well as the MBA- DEM program (introducing its third batch) is  playing a pivotal role in building it. We are focused on being a futuristic academic institution and creating leaders for the future.

Addressing the incoming batch, Chief Guest at the GSCM Program Inaugural ceremony, Kamesh Mullapudi, Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting (US-India), explained clients' perspectives while managing the supply chains in organizations. He said, "The introduction of digital and technology in management studies was the need of the hour and IIM Udaipur has been at the forefront of it. The recent pandemic involving the world, has brought to the fore the complexities in managing and maintaining supply chains. Even the impact of situations in other countries like the Ukraine war and supply chain disruptions have obligated the supply chain professionals to think about the increasingly important role they will play. The importance of analytics and digitization of operations have become critical.”

He concluded his speech with the question , "what does a future manager need?" and answered it as: "The ability to learn (focus on the art of learning), the ability to adapt (to run organizations successfully by adapting to the new normal), and the ability to empathize with a human touch.”

In the DEM Program Inaugural ceremony, Chief Guest, CP Gurnani, CEO & Managing Director, Tech Mahindra, said, "As I address you today, when you are here to become the future Digital  managers & leaders, I want to emphasize that IIMU has taken the lead in innovating the courseware by setting a centre for digital enterprise at the institute. The agility showed by responding to the needs of global supply chain management and digital transformations, the way the institute has integrated industry practitioners into the academic learning is phenomenal. Digital and business transformation are two sides of the same coin.” 

He concluded by saying  “ It's all about your agility and not your age; it is all about your learning and not your degree.” He also said that, “one could be successful if one can anticipate the future and can be relevant in the future, whether that future is quantum computing, web 3.0, metaverse, or blockchain. It doesn't matter which technology solves the business problem but the fact that you learn to explore the possibility of digital solving business problems.”

IIM Udaipur is the only management institute in India to have a full time MBA in DEM. It is also the only IIM to have a full time one year MBA in GSCM. The DEM and GSCM programs are 1-year full-time residential MBA programs for graduates in any discipline with 3+ years’ experience in any domain. 

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