Concrete foundation for students

Former Managing Director and Regional Vice President of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, South Asia and industry veteran, Dilip Puri, has announced his new education venture – Indian School of Hospitality (ISH), with a promise to reimagine hospitality education in India.

KANCHAN NATH

1. How are you going to bridge the gap between supply and demand of talent in the industry?

Firstly, we are not looking to meet the scarcity of talent where we are promising to provide 80,000 students. We are very clear we are an institution of higher learning to develop management talent for the industry. I am not into skill development, at least not at this stage. We are preparing students to enter hospitality and allied industries through the management cadre of the country. My sense is that that we will not be catering to just the hotel industry. We expect companies to recruit for retail, aviation, fashion, luxury, FMCG, banking, and financial services. These are companies that recruit from international hotel schools. I want to make sure they come and recruit from ISH as well. I am not looking to fill the gap in hotels, and I think hotels have started to realise that they have to look beyond the hotel institutes to recruit. For the last three years, they have been going to colleges and recruiting. By following this practice, we are not limiting ourselves to hiring people from hotel institutes alone. Today, Cornell does a 10-day General Manager’s programme. If you do the programme, that’s a great leadership development for you. We want to bring that kind of education to India. We have three verticals at ISH, one is Hospitality Management and the other two are Culinary Education and Executive Education. In Executive Education, for instance, instead of following a Harvard or Cornell executive programme, we want to bring something of the order to India, so that the programme is affordable, yet provides the same value and quality in terms of leadership development.

2. What was the idea behind choosing École hôtelière de Lausanne as a partner?

ISH envisions its curriculum design to be a global benchmark of hospitality education in the near future and in order to do so, has entered into a strategic partnership with Lausanne Hospitality Consulting (LHC) for curriculum development and faculty training. ISH has partnered with LHC in preparation for an academic certification by École hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL), the world’s oldest and top-ranked hospitality management higher education institution. In addition to the four-year hospitality management programme, ISH will offer several long and shortterm programmes in both culinary and executive education. When I was looking for options for a good academic partner who understood our market, they were right there. Lausanne Hospitality Consulting’s CEO, Yateendra Sinh, is of Indian origin and has worked here in the past with Oberoi Hotels. He understood the opportunities well and knew the market better. We are getting huge amount of value addition from them.

We are preparing students to enter hospitality and allied industries through the management cadre of thr country. I think hotels need to take responsibility for the education of students, when they are on these industrial training and internship programmes.

– Dilip Puri.

3. Is quality over quantity something you believe in?

Yes, I do. We have kept our recruitment number so small that we cannot afford a student who doesn’t meet the criteria. Our own selection criteria of profiling a student before taking him/her into the college clearly suggests that quality is way more important for us. One simple reason for this is that it is these students who are the brand ambassadors of the institute. They are the ones who will sell ISH in the future.

4. What role are the panelists going to play at ISH?

They will play various roles, including providing mentorship to our students. We believe that every student should have an industry mentor. The panellists will also provide internship and placement opportunities, and their executive and senior managers will be the faculty at ISH.

Fact File

• The ISH campus is under development and will be ready by May 2018, in time for the maiden batch of students in August 2018

Location: Sector 83, Gurgaon

Fee Structure: Rs. 5.5 lakhs per annum. If one opts for accommodation there is an incremental cost of Rs 10,000 per month.

The courses on offer

• The core academic programmes being offered at ISH are a four-year hospitality management programme and a four-year programme in culinary arts. The education structure at ISH is aimed at providing the ideal foundation for managerial and leadership development, strategic thinking- leveraging both macro and micro perspectives, as well as building emotional and intellectual intelligence.
• Beside the core academic programmes, ISH will also offer various short-term programmes in culinary specialisations as well as a whole range of executive education programmes catering to professionals in hospitality, travel, aviation, retail and other customer-focused industries.
• ISH has received the Letter of Intent from the Department of Higher Education, Government of Haryana, to set up a self-financing degree college affiliated to a state university.
• The institute’s Advisory Council comprises leaders from hospitality and other service sectors, who will provide strategic inputs, guidance, and mentorship to the faculty and students, as well as support ISH in terms of internship and placement opportunities in India and overseas.