I am honoured to have taken over as the Director of Indian Institute of Management Calcutta on July 30, 2025, following my tenure as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lucknow for two terms. I look forward to crafting new stories of visionary transformation as a part of my journey at this iconic institution.

Indian Institute of Management Calcutta has been chiselling its prowess over the past six decades with its academic excellence, innovative approach and pioneering curricula in management studies. The country’s first IIM, established in 1961, IIM Calcutta has been recognised as an ‘Institute of National Importance’. It is India’s first B-school to achieve the prestigious triple crown of accreditations—AMBA, EQUIS, and AACSB—and is the only Indian member of the CEMS Global Alliance in Management Education. The Institute has to its credit alumni who have emerged as thinkers, leaders, and changemakers who have shaped the corporate world, public policy, and society at large.

Known for its academic rigour, global reputation, and thought leadership, the institute offers a range of programs including the MBA, MBA for Executives (MBAEx), Doctoral and Executive Ph.D. programs, and a broad portfolio of Executive Education. It also runs two flagship collaborative programs: the Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics (with IIT Kharagpur and ISI Kolkata), and the Post Graduate Programme for Executives in Visionary Leadership in Manufacturing (with IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras). The institute has six ‘Centres of Excellence’ that foster interdisciplinary research and engage with industry to drive innovation, policy, and practice. With over 70 international academic partnerships, IIM Calcutta offers students global exposure through exchange programs and joint initiatives.

The Institute has a vibrant campus which pulsates with high-octane energy and keeps evolving in the stimulating contact of its each incoming cohort of students bringing kaleidoscopic streams of talent. It has always been avant-garde in management domain in meeting the agile challenges of the ever renovating global ecosystem in terms of technological disruptions, sustainability imperatives, and the nimbly evolving economic arena. The unstinting commitment to intellectual rigor, ethical values, and global relevance provides this institute a strong platform to launch new formats of corporate leadership adding deeper meanings to the semantics of meaningful management.

This premier institute has been transmuting every new challenge into a new-fangled opportunity using its classrooms as labs for innovative ideation. Equipped with the trailblazing research conducted by its faculty in collaborative camaraderie with the crème de la crème scholars of national and international repute and the indelible imprint of its vast alumni network, the Institute gears up to send its students into the outside world as harbingers of positive change working relentlessly to develop the world into a better abode for the posterity to prosper.

The five ‘I’s namely- “integration, inclusion, innovation, internationalisation and Indianness” have been the quintessence of this institution’s ipseity. These shall be the “sutras” which shall steer the way to “develop innovative and ethical future leaders capable of managing change and transformation” to create a healthier, happier and harmonious world.

As Director, I am committed to working closely with stakeholders to embark upon an odyssey of rejuvenation composing a new ode to success at IIM Calcutta.

Warm regards,

Prof. Alok Kumar Rai
Director
Indian Institute of Management Calcutta