IU Kelley School and Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow announce business analytics program

As a result of a partnership between Indiana University's Kelley School of Business and the Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow, two selective, graduate-level, yearlong certificate programs in the emerging field of business analytics and global strategy will be available to about 100 students. One program will be for students enrolled at IIM-Lucknow and another will be open to working professionals in India.

Ultimately, Kelley and IIM-Lucknow plan to partner to deliver a graduate degree program on business analytics, similar to what is already offered at IU.

"The Kelley School is on the cutting edge in the rapidly growing field of business analytics. Likewise, the Indian Institute of Management at Lucknow is widely recognized as being among the finest business schools in India and, indeed, the world," said Dan Smith, dean of the Kelley School.

"Our collaborative goal is to fundamentally advance the quality of decision-making by business leaders by improving their ability to draw meaningful insights from the massive amounts of data available to them today," Smith said. "We are indeed honored to pursue this aim with Dr. Devi Singh and his colleagues at IIM-Lucknow. We share ambitious goals and a positive entrepreneurial culture. I am confident that this partnership will be long-term and will likely give rise to other collaborations."

"Information systems and business analytics is a very strong area at Kelley," said Devi Singh, director of IIM-Lucknow. "Their experience in developing programs successfully, particularly working closely with American and multinational companies -- which have operations around the world, including in India -- is impressive.

"As organizations become more global and complex, and as data volumes grow, they will need tools to make decisions that will have great impact in the future," Singh added. "What we bring to the table is a well-trained faculty and an understanding and access to large Indian data and Indian corporations. I think it will be a good combination of our two schools and talents."

Earlier this year, the Kelley School welcomed its new Institute for Business Analytics, which works with companies in how to best use data about their practices and consumers – using techniques such as predictive analytics, optimization and simulation – to make fact-based decisions that improve productivity, increase profits and create competitive advantages.

Three Kelley faculty of Indian descent helped to create the new Institute for Business Analytics: co-director Vijay Khatri, associate professor of information systems; Ash Soni, associate dean of information technology, professor of operations and decision technologies and the ArcelorMittal Faculty Fellow; and Venkataramanan.