About Indian Management Conclave (IMC): India’s Definitive Annual Platform for Management Education

The Indian Management Conclave (IMC) is India’s most respected annual forum advancing excellence in management education. Organised by MBAUniverse.com in partnership with the country’s leading business schools and knowledge institutions, IMC has established itself as the nation’s definitive conference and awards platform for management education.

IMC convenes on one stage what no other platform in India brings together: Former Presidents of India, serving Union Secretaries, Chairmen of national regulatory bodies, Deans of the world’s leading business schools, Chairmen and CEOs of India’s largest enterprises, Directors of top Indian B-school, Editors of peer-reviewed management journals, and researchers working on the field’s most pressing questions.

IMC 2026 is the 16th edition. It will be hosted by IIM Lucknow at its Noida Campus on September 18–19, 2026.

IMC 2026: KEY INITIATIVES
After fifteen years of evolution, IMC has grown beyond a single event into a comprehensive platform comprising multiple strategic initiatives, each designed to address a distinct need within management education.

1. IMC Conclave: A Policy Platform for Education Leaders
The flagship two-day Conclave is the apex platform of IMC Conclave. Sessions include Inaugural and Valedictory Addresses, Keynotes and Plenary sessions, the IMC Roundtable of Directors, and structured networking.

IMC sessions are designed around three guiding principles:

• Fact-based, not rhetoric-based. Every session is anchored in data, research, or documented institutional experience.
• Multi-stakeholder. Policy makers, industry, academia are together on one forum.
• Global outlook. International deans, editors, and thinkers bring comparative perspective to every Indian conversation.

2. IMC International Research Conference (IMC-IRC)
IMC-IRC is the only research conference in India devoted exclusively to management education. Developed in partnership with XLRI Jamshedpur and inaugurated in 2024, IMC-IRC has already hosted over 300 researchers across two editions. Participating authors come from 9 IIMs, XLRI, SPJIMR, IRMA, NMIMS, Symbiosis, and other leading institutions.
IMC-IRC 2026 will invite original research across five tracks spanning AI-enabled pedagogy, AI analytics and ethics, teaching methodologies, internationalisation, and employability. Accepted authors can pursue publication through IMC’s Scopus-indexed partner journals.

Full details on the IMC-IRC 2026 page.

3. IMC Award for Excellence in Management Education
Launched in 2013, IMC Awards identify, document, and recognise the best practices and successful initiatives of Indian business schools in strategic areas — admissions policy, curriculum, pedagogy, industry engagement, and education technology.

Key features:

• Award selection by an independent, eminent Jury purely on the merit of the nominated initiative.
• No registration or participation fee. Not-for-profit.
• Awards have been presented by a Former President of India, a serving Higher Education Secretary, AICTE Chairmen, global management thinkers, and business icons.
• Award-winning initiatives have been published by McGraw Hill and Pearson.

IMC Awards 2025 were won by BITS Pilani (Gold) and IIM Sambalpur (Silver) for their work on AI in MBA education. Twenty-five leading B-schools participated.

4. IMC Distinguished Alumni Award (IMC-DAA)
Alumni achievers are the brand-ambassadors of Indian management education. The IMC Distinguished Alumni Award, launched in 2015, recognises outstanding business leaders who graduated from an Indian business school and are now making national and global impact.

Selection is based on three criteria:

• Excellence in management and business practice.
• Service to organisations of highest integrity.
• National leadership with global impact.

Past Recipients

• IMC-DAA 2025: Shri Rajesh Agrawal, Secretary, Ministry of Commerce | IIFT Delhi Alumnus
• IMC-DAA 2023: Mr Ajay Kapur, CEO, Cement Business, Adani Cement | K J Somaiya Mumbai Alumnus
• IMC-DAA 2022: Mr Kabir Ahmed Shakir, CFO, Tata Communications | BIM Trichy Alumnus
• IMC-DAA 2021: Mr Ravi Kumar S, President, Infosys | XIMB Alumnus
• IMC-DAA 2019: Mr D N Prasad | (TAPMI Manipal); Ms Rituparna Chakraborty | (GIM Goa)
• IMC-DAA 2018: Mr Neeraj Kakkar | (MDI Gurgaon); Mr Krishnakumar Natarajan | (XLRI Jamshedpur)
• IMC-DAA 2017: Mr H. Srikrishnan | (LIBA Chennai); Mr Raajesh M Nair | (IMI New Delhi)
• IMC-DAA 2016: Ms Shilpa Divekar | (SPJIMR); Mr Dev Amritesh | (IMT Ghaziabad)
• IMC-DAA 2015: Mr R S Sodhi | (IRMA); Ms Avani Davda (NMIMS)

IMC Legacy: Sixteen Years of Shaping the Conversation
The IMC journey reflects the challenges and the reorientation of Indian management education across the last decade and a half.

IMC was launched in 2010 at a moment when Indian MBA education had grown for two decades but lacked a serious platform to address quality, employability, and institutional health. The first IMC 2010 in New Delhi — on the theme Rethinking and Rebooting Indian Management Education — filled that void.

In its first years, IMC drew national attention by surfacing inconvenient truths. The MBAUniverse.com MBA Employability Survey released at IMC 2012 was widely quoted by media and drew the attention of policy makers to the crisis facing mid-tier and lower-tier B-schools.

From 2013, IMC made a deliberate shift from problems to solutions. The IMC Awards for Excellence in Management Education were launched that year. At IMC 2014, the EPSI–MBAUniverse.com white paper Vision 2025 for Indian Management Education was released and later developed into a book published by McGraw Hill.
From 2015, IMC expanded its footprint by working with India’s leading B-schools as hosts. Starting with ISB Hyderabad in 2015, IMC has been hosted by a top institution every year that brings its own intellectual strength to the edition.

By 2022, with the twelfth edition, IMC completed a six-year arc that mapped the full MBA value chain — Curriculum (2017) to Pedagogy (2018) to Faculty (2019) to Learner Centricity (2021) to Outcomes (2022).

From 2023, IMC has turned to the defining external force of our time — technology, disruption, and AI. This third phase has shaped the themes of IMC 2023, 2024, and 2025, and now continues into IMC 2026.

Past Chief Guests & Keynote Speakers 

• Late Shri Pranab Mukherjee, Former President of India | Chief Guest, 10th IMC 2019
• Shri Ram Nath Kovind, Former President of India | Chief Guest, 12th IMC 2022
• Shri Vineet Joshi, Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Government of India | Valedictory Address, 15th IMC 2025
• Dr Srikant Datar, Dean, Harvard Business School, USA; Co-author of Rethinking the MBA
• Dr Henry Mintzberg, Management Guru and Author; Cleghorn Professor, McGill University
• Dr Soumitra Dutta, Dean, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, UK
• Dr Vijay Govindarajan, Thinker, Author, and Coxe Distinguished Professor, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth
• Dr David Schmittlein, Former Dean, MIT Sloan School of Management, USA
• Dr Edward A. Snyder, Former Dean, Yale School of Management, USA
• Dr Jikyeong Kang, President and Dean, Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Manila, Philippines
• Dr Dipak C. Jain, President, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Shanghai.
• Dr Pankaj Ghemawat, Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy, IESE Business School, Spain
• Dr Bharat N. Anand, Faculty Chair, HBX Initiative (now Harvard Business School Online), Harvard Business School, USA
• Mr R C Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki India
• Mr Suresh Narayanan, Chairman and Managing Director, Nestlé India
• Mr Dilip Shanghvi, Managing Director, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries
• Mr Harsh Mariwala, Chairman, Marico Limited
• Mr C P Gurnani, Former MD and CEO, Tech Mahindra
• Mr Shyam Srinivasan, Former MD and CEO, Federal Bank
• Mr Sunil Kant Munjal, Former Joint MD, Hero MotoCorp; Chairman, Hero Enterprise
• Mr R S Sodhi, Former Managing Director, GCMMF (AMUL)
• Mr Vineet Nayar, Former Vice Chairman, HCL Technologies; Author of Employees First, Customers Second
• Mr Prabhjeet Singh, President, Uber India and South Asia
• Mr Kamal Bali, President and MD, Volvo Group India
• Mr Hemant Malik, Executive Director, ITC Limited
• Mr Neetan Chopra, Chief Digital and Information Officer, IndiGo

Past Host Institutions

Past Themes across Fifteen Editions
IMC themes have moved through three distinct phases: contemporary issues (2010–2016), systematic mapping of the MBA value chain (2017–2022), and technology-disruption-AI (2023 onwards). The full list is on the IMC 2026 Theme page.

Past Speakers
IMC has hosted Deans of Harvard Business School, Oxford Saïd, MIT Sloan, Yale SOM, CEIBS, AIM Manila, Singapore Management University’s LKCSB, INSEAD, and IESE Business School. It has hosted Chairmen and CEOs including Mr R C Bhargava (Maruti Suzuki), Mr Suresh Narayanan (Nestlé India), Mr Dilip Shanghvi (Sun Pharmaceutical), Mr Harsh Mariwala (Marico), Mr Prabhjeet Singh (Uber India), and others. It has hosted serving Secretaries of Government of India, Chairmen of AICTE, and the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog.

The full past speakers list is on the Speakers page

IMC 2026 Host: IIM Lucknow
The 16th IMC 2026 is hosted by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow. Established in 1984, IIM Lucknow is the fourth IIM in India after Calcutta, Ahmedabad, and Bangalore. It is accredited by AACSB and AMBA and consistently ranks among India’s top management institutions in NIRF.

IIM Lucknow’s Noida Campus in Sector 62 is a dedicated hub for its executive education and management development programmes in the National Capital Region. The campus offers facilities for large academic conferences and is well-connected to Delhi and Gurgaon. 

IMC is grateful to Prof. Manmohan Prasad Gupta, Director, IIM Lucknow, and his colleagues for partnering with IMC on the 16th edition. Their academic leadership and institutional commitment will shape the depth and rigour of IMC 2026.

About MBAUniverse.com
MBAUniverse.com is India’s leading MBA Education portal. Since its inception in 2008, it has guided over 1.5 million MBA aspirants on their journey to India’s top B-schools. MBAUniverse.com publishes extensive content on CAT, XAT, CMAT, NMAT, SNAP, and other MBA entrance exams, along with rankings, college guides, B-school news, and interviews with Directors and Industry Leaders.

MBAUniverse.com is the organiser of the Indian Management Conclave. Every edition of IMC since 2010 has been conceptualised, curated, and delivered by the MBAUniverse.com team in partnership with host institutions.