The MHRD quite recently extended the term of Prof. Janat Shah as the director of IIM Udaipur for a period of 5 years (2017-2022). This makes him the first director of one of the younger IIMs to get the extension. It also speaks of the consistency that IIM Udaipur can expect over its growth from being a newborn to one of the top b-schools in the world.
Prof. Janat Shah has worked as a senior professor with IIM Bangalore prior to taking over as the director of IIM Udaipur. He is recognised as one of the most celebrated faculties at both the institutes. Leveraging upon his experience and expertise in operations and supply chain management, Prof. Shah has been actively involved in promoting the domain with the help of the PGPX program at IIM Udaipur in partnership with Purdue, USA concentrating on Supply Chain Management.
Prof. Shah holds an FPM degree in operations Management from IIM Ahmedabad and had completed graduation from IIT Bombay as a mechanical engineer. He also holds research and consultancy experience with the likes of Tata Chemicals, Tata Motors, Infosys, Aditya Birla Group to name a few. His publications and journals include ~around~ 13 international and 30 peer reviewed, the most notable being the one published with the International Symposium on Logistics, University of Nottingham and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Prof. Shah is also a well-known author of cases used by different management institutes for academic purposes. he has been honoured as a visiting scholar at the Sloan School of Management, MIT and has worked as a visiting faculty at The Logistic Institute at national University, Singapore. He also holds the privilege of being a special professor at Nottingham University. Prof. Shah, along with bearing the title of the director at IIM Udaipur, is also a senior Operations Management faculty at the Institute.
He has been instrumental in driving the spirit of the Institute. He strongly believes in letting students take the lead and is very supportive of student's initiatives. His focus on research oriented educations is apparent from the results that IIM Udaipur has been producing since inception. Upon interaction with students, he has always highlighted his growth matrix where he aims to make IIM Udaipur one of the top 100 business schools in the world by 2030.
His determined focus to move as early as possible to our permanent campus has made it possible for IIM Udaipur to be the first younger IIMs to have moved completely to the new campus. The student body helps prioritise what it needs essentially over the long term developmental aims of the new campus.
Prof. Shah is one of those professors who believes in his student community. He harbours vision to one day take IIMU to a stage where invigilators are not needed in classrooms. Apart from the academic rigour, he encourages students to take up social work and in that stride, IIMU has numerous faculties coming in from the TATA Trusts who mentor the "Rural Immersion" program the students undertake. The social responsibility club, Prayatna, Is very close to his heart and he even strives to make IIMU the bridge between the NGOs in Rajasthan and some large companies to initiate girl child education programs.
Students from both IIM Udaipur and Bangalore remember him for his valuable contribution in their lives and come back to him for guidance time and again. The student community at IIMU is working hard and is marching on the path he has laid out to achieve that vision. In his own words, "IIMU is committed to nurturing leaders and entrepreneurs who will power their organisations in the emerging economies. IIMU aspires to take its place among the world-class management schools creating global knowledge"