XLRI Jamshedpur opens Singapore chapter
Photo: By Special Arrangement
REASON TO SMILE: Students of XLRI Jamshedpur, India's first private sector business school to have gained a noticeable foothold in Singapore.
Eager as Singapore is to project itself as a choice destination in Asia for foreign students for higher education, the City-State tries to provide ample space to institutions from other countries to market their brands.
India's XLRI Jamshedpur, known as a School of Business and Human Resources, is among the management institutes in Asia to have gained an early and noticeable foothold on the Singapore educational scene. Even as the authorities in the City-State appear to have set their sights on attracting world-class business and engineering schools such as the Indian institutes of management and technology, XLRI Jamshedpur has succeeded in gaining access to the highly competitive educational hub in Singapore.
Image International [S] Pte Ltd., a Singapore-based private sector firm in the "knowledge" industry, is the local partner for XLRI.
Rajashree Murthy and Rajan Nagarajan, Image Directors, said there was "no conflict of interest" between their firm and the giant from Jamshedpur in ushering an XLRI "chapter" in Singapore, an international financial centre.
Having got the clearance for the project from Singapore's Ministry of Education in February this year, Image took the "initiative" of bringing the new institute into existence as quickly as possible, Ms. Rajashree said.
Christened XLRI Singapore, the business school began classes on June 30. The student intake was 40: seven from India, the others Indian expatriates from the City-State. For XLRI, the Singapore chapter is the second overseas outfit, the first one having been set up in Dubai.
XLRI director Father N. Casimir Raj tends to believe that the Institute could see the City-State as a launch pad for reaching out to the Asia Pacific region.
XLRI is said to be India's first private sector business school to have branched out abroad. The Singapore chapter offers post-graduate diploma in business management and other avenues.
P.S. SURYANARAYANA
Education in Singapore
