Why does the Global Indian gets drawn to PGPX- Financial Times profiles an Xian.

Della Bradshaw, Business Education Editor, Financial Times was here, last month. She spent sometime with us in the class, listening to Shafeeq present market entry strategy for a company wanting to go abroad. She has interacted with a couple of Xians (from the reverse brain league) and has picked up Sanjay to profile in her publication dated 15th October. Here are excerpts from her article.

After working for Cisco Systems for seven years in Silicon Valley, Sanjay Kuberkar decided it was time to return home to India. "I was keen on moving to Asia [not necessarily to India only] because of the rapid growth the region has enjoyed in the past few years, and the opportunities that growth presents to a professional," he says. "These opportunities are not available in the US."

He decided to use an MBA as a tool for returning to the Asian market and looked at programmes throughout Asia, including China. He decided on the PGPX (post-graduate programme for executives) at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, a one-year post-experience degree similar to MBAs offered in Europe by IMD or Insead.

This year's statistics for the PGPX programme show that Mr Kuberkar is not atypical of the class. The average age of the participants is more than 31 and, although almost all are Indian nationals, more than 80 per cent have worked outside India and half of those had returned to India from overseas positions in order to join. Perhaps the most telling of the statistics is the average GMAT score of the class: 699, comparable with any of the world's top MBA programmes.

Mr Kuberkar believes it will open doors. "After the programme, I hope to either start a new venture in the healthcare sector [the business plan for which is in the works] or join a venture capital firm," he says. "This is quite a different plan from what I had decided when I entered PGPX, but PGPX has pushed me to think differently and think big and, at the same time, helped me discover . . . and appreciate my strengths."

The full article is available here.

No wonder, I see more & more desis (during the recently concluded interviews for next class) wanting to come back home and wanting to make PGPX, their beach head.