The launch at IIM Calcutta campus was held in presence of Consul General of Japan, Fujio Samukawa as chief guest, Sanjay G Dhande, director of IIT Kanpur, JICA advisor professor Shoji Shiba, Deputy Director General, CII, Smt Sarita Nagpal along with IIM Calcutta Director, Professor Shekhar Chaudhury and chairman of the program, professor M N Pal.
Appreciating the initiative of the programme, chief guest, Shri Fujio Samukawa, Consul General of Japan says, "Sooner or later the world will acknowledge the Indian made products which will be internationally competitive". IIT Kanpur Director Shri Sanjay G Dhande says the idea of the programme is to develop these students to innovate new products and help developing Indian manufacturing sector. IIM Calcutta Director, points out that the idea behind this unique programme is to make Indian manufacturing a customer-oriented manufacturing.
The students of this batch of PGPEX-VLM have been selected through a meticulous assessment of merit and experience of candidates with only engineering background. The pioneering class of 32 is a remarkable blend of diversity, domain expertise, academic accomplishment and professional achievement. The professional experience of the batch is over eight years and four of them are of sponsored candidates. The course fees would be Rs 5 lac with additional expenses like going to Japan and other incidental expenses.
IIM Calcutta, in collaboration with IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras had launched this unique Joint IIM-IIT One Year PGPEX-VLM in August 2007 under the aegis of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council and the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The Programme draws support from the Government of Japan by way of deputation of Japanese faculty and industry experts and training of PGPEX-VLM students and faculty in manufacturing centers of excellence in Japan under a collaboration agreement signed by the Prime Ministers of India and Japan.
Incidentally, the first batch of the programme was started last year and has just concluded the placement process. The final outcome was overwhelmingly successful. The average salary offer was Rs 15 lacs and the highest offer was Rs 25 lacs. Incidentally, the average pay package of these students had Rs 5 lacs. So substantial growth has been achieved with industry knowledge and manufacturing expertise from Japan as the programme included tour to Japanese manufacturing companies. The companies where the students have been placed include PWC, Century Plywood, Cummins, Infosys, Jindal Steel, Reliance ADA, Satyam, Ranbaxy, Tata Power etc. The striking note of the programme is that no foreign placement is allowed. So whatever knowledge that these students earn in this programme would be applicable to develop Indian manufacturing sector.
