Goa Institute of Management: A premier destination for students across India, nestled in the heart of the Western Ghats

Dhruv Aggarwal’s plans of pursuing his dream of an MBA did not include Goa. But when he started his research to zero in on a B-school after the Common Admission Test, a management school located in a little known corner of the tiniest state—thousands of kilometres away from his home in Delhi—seemed the most obvious choice. He is not alone. There are hundreds of such prospective business leaders from far-flung parts of India who have congregated at the Goa Institute of Management (GIM) in pursuit of a dynamic corporate career. A world away from the fun and frolic associated with the state, the B-school is today not just a confluence of students and culture but also a showcase of the diversity within the country’s party capital. It had very humble beginnings in 1993, when it was founded by the late Jesuit priest and Padma-awardee Father Romuald D’Souza. A former director of XLRI, Jamshedpur, and founding member of Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, D’Souza started GIM when a bunch of leading personalities, including state ministers, invited him to start one in Goa. He had six faculty members, 24 students, and no money to invest in building a new campus. So the college began inside the campus of a law college in the state capital, Panaji, when one of its patrons managed to get the classrooms free after 12:30 pm. By the mid-1990s, it was hard to ignore the need for a larger campus. The state government stepped in, letting GIM shift its campus to a heritage building that earlier housed the Goa Medical College. After spending a few years in the stunning 300-year-old building overlooking the Mandovi River, the management finally decided to get its own campus in 2006-07. Not run like a typical business venture, finding funds remained a challenge. But the goodwill of the institute helped the management raise Rs 12 crore from its patrons. And the rank and profile of its board of governors came in handy as many of them provided guarantees for the Rs 35-odd crore bank loans for the modern campus. So it was upon the hill in Sanquelim in Goa, enveloped by mist and surrounded by the lush green forests of the Western Ghats, that GIM found its abode in 2010. The campus is spread over 50 acres near the state’s borders with neighbouring Karnataka and Maharashtra. Since then, it has invested more than Rs 250 crore—taking its total investments to Rs 300 crore—in expanding and modernising its facilities and labs and building amenities promoting extracurricular activities. It now boasts a cricket ground, basketball court, football ground, gymnasium, lawn tennis court, and a swimming pool, among others, apart from faculty quarters and student hostels. “We are not located in a city, and we don’t want our campus to look like one. Architecturally, we haven’t changed the lay of the land [which is hilly],” says Professor Ajit Parulekar, GIM’s Director. But it’s not just the view from the campus that stands apart. GIM has carved out a niche for itself because of its academic excellence, superior facilities, and its track record that dwarfs that of many of its peers in the top metros. After all, it is no mean feat that after steadily improving its rank over the last two years, GIM now stands in the 24th position in the latest edition of the BT-MDRA India’s Best B-schools survey. One key factor that has boosted GIM’s fortunes over the years is how it operates. Father D’Souza inculcated a culture of excellence from the very beginning. In spite of its small size, the first few faculty members came with doctorates from IIM A, B, and C. Unlike many private B-schools in the country, GIM is run by a Board of Governors, who hail from the upper echelons of Goa’s education, bureaucracy, and business. “We run like a society, which at any point in time has 17-24 members. None of them are investors; thus, no money goes out. It’s purely not-for-profit. But we are quite efficient [in managing the finances], and whatever surplus remains, we invest back [in the institute],” says Parulekar, who joined the institute back in 2000. He stresses its constant focus on improving the curricula as per the changing trends and business environment, and its investments in faculty and upgrading facilities as key to GIM’s success. Keeping pace with the increasingly volatile environment that is affecting all leading corporations, GIM has been agile in terms of curriculum—introducing new courses and programmes when it saw the need. In 2024, for instance, it launched an International Double Degree in Analytics with Nova School of Business &amp; Economics, Portugal. In 2020, amid the pandemic, GIM came up with a post-graduate diploma in management (PGDM) in banking, insurance, and financial services. Now, it offers a full-time PGDM in big data analytics and a hybrid PGDM for working executives, while its programme in healthcare management was launched in 2013. It attracts 60 students every year and has established GIM as one of the leaders in the field. That is why Jernail Singh, a dentist from Dehradun, chose GIM to pursue a two-year full-time PGDM in healthcare management. According to Anubhav Mishra, who teaches marketing at GIM, specialised programmes such as these are in high demand. “We are constantly updating our courses to prepare the students for the demanding work environment,” he says. Those efforts are reflected in the college’s improved score on the Future Orientation metric in the BT-MDRA list. It has improved from 135.9 out of 200 in 2023 to 142.9 in 2024, and that is the primary reason for the college’s improved overall score this year and a jump of three spots from 27 last year. Besides, it is also in the Top 15 in terms of learning experience. Last, but not the least, is GIM’s track record in placing its students, which has stood out as its greatest strength. In a market marked by a shortage of jobs and poor placement records even of the country’s leading institutes like the IITs, GIM brought 54 companies to the campus and placed all its students in 2024 with an average salary of Rs 14.81 lakh per annum. The highest salary stood at Rs 55 lakh per annum. Today, GIM’s total student strength is about 1,200 with 600 in each batch, and the number of full-time faculty, which includes foreign nationals as well, is close to 90—similar to the country’s leading B-schools like IIM Calcutta. GIM’s leaders are in no mood to sit back on their laurels. They now plan to expand it into a full-fledged university that will offer more programmes on business management and related subjects. And expansion is already on top of Parulekar’s mind. “We are in search of more land,” he tells Business Today. For students like Nikita Batra, GIM has shown a path to success. Batra, who graduated with a commerce degree from Chandigarh University, says moving to the campus has turned out to be life-changing, and she cherishes the challenges it threw up of adjusting to the rigours of an MBA programme. It has sharpened her skills, like, for instance, while participating in group discussions, often held on the rooftop with a splendid view of the Ghats. That’s an experience she will not forget. (Students’ names have been changed on request) @arndutt

Goa Institute of Management: A premier destination for students across India, nestled in the heart of the Western Ghats

Nestled in the lush forests of the Western Ghats, the Goa Institute of Management is attracting students from the farthest corners of the country with its up-to-date curriculum and strong heritage