Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM) was set up as the first school of management within the IIT system in 1993 at a time when India had just opened its doors to economic liberalization. The school was established with an aim to develop managers with a strong technological background who would lead tomorrow's corporate behemoths on the path of success. The concept was to start a business school along the lines of Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, that is, a business school within a renowned technical institute. The School of Management was founded by a distinguished alumnus & a life time Fellow of the Institute, Mr. Vinod Gupta (B. Tech. 1967), the former CEO and Chairman of InfoGROUP (previously known as InfoUSA) whose generous endowment of 2 Million US Dollars was matched by liberal support from the Government of India.
The foundation stone of the School building was laid in 1994 by the then president of India, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma. The School moved to its own building in 1996. Over the years the school has expanded its scope to include much more than its flagship Masters in Business Administration (MBA) programme. The school offers a Doctoral programme in management (PhD) and an MBA programme for working executives (aptly termed as the Executive MBA programme) in the IIT Kharagpur campus in Kolkata and IIT Bhubaneswar campus in Bhubaneswar. The school also regularly organizes a number of seminars, Management Development Programmes (MDPs) and workshops for managers and other management teachers across the world. The School has to its credit many consultancy and sponsored projects which helped in the ultimate aim of social progress of the country. In a step to move beyond traditional borders, VGSoM tied up with the Royal Danish Embassy, Dhaka, in 2000 to provide Management Development Programmes for mid-level managers in Bangladesh. Since then the institute has been regularly organising Management Development Programmes and seminars to cater to various needs of the industry.
Now, two decades after its inception, the school has grown holistically, winning several accolades and setting up new benchmarks for excellence. VGSoM today, plays a pioneering role in nurturing the leaders of tomorrow by blending the management philosophy along with the technological advancement to develop managers who appreciate both the critical technological issues and their managerial implications. World renowned for its technological prowess, IIT Kharagpur helps VGSoM leverage its strength in terms of infrastructure, intellectual resources, illustrious alumni and its "will to be the best" Business Management School in India.
Mr. Vinod Gupta is the Founder and Ex-Chairman of InfoUSA, Inc. The publicly held company (NASDAQ: IUSA) is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, with more than $300 million in yearly revenue and 2,000 employees. Over three million customers use their proprietary databases and services for direct marketing, telemarketing, marketing planning, lead generation, sales planning, customer analysis and credit generation. Mr. Gupta served as CEO of the company from the time of its incorporation in 1972 until September 1997 and from August 1998 to August 2008.
Mr. Gupta graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 1967, and went to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln to complete his MS in Agricultural Engineering and a Master's degree in Business Administration in 1971. After graduation, while working as a marketing research analyst with a company manufacturing mobile homes, he was asked to evaluate the performance of rival companies. It was then that he found that it was difficult-to-get information and that information gathered also tended to become obsolete in no time. That led him to the idea of starting American Business Information Inc., now known as InfoUSA Inc., which made a modest profit of $ 22,000 at the end of the first year. The lists prepared by the company soon became cost-saving marketing tools for American small business and the company took off.
Mr. Gupta, who subsequently became an American citizen, has always been conscious of his Indian roots. He generously contributes to his alma mater as a mark of respect for making him what he is today. In 1993, he gave $2 million to establish a business school in IIT Kharagpur to be modelled after the School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This new school that he had helped set up was named, 'Vinod Gupta School of Management'. Mr. Gupta has been donating generously to a number of causes at IIT Kharagpur. He has also established a state of the art Science Block at his old school at Rampur, which was inaugurated by former U.S. President, Bill Clinton, in 2003. He recently donated $1 million to set up a Women's Polytechnic in Rampur. He is establishing another multimedia training institute for women at Rampur, named after Hillary Clinton. His generosity is not confined to India. He has also donated $2 million to establish a curriculum for small business management at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.
About IIT Kharagpur he says that it was here that he discovered a different India. He was from a tiny village in UP and at Kharagpur he found students speaking different languages and coming from different cultures. He is ever grateful to IIT Kharagpur for this awakening and for giving him a solid foundation on which he built his career. His adopted country, the United States of America, gave him the opportunities and wealth to make it possible to generously help worthy causes in both countries.
