The P&Q Interview: BITSoM Dean Saravanan Kesavan On AI, Growth & Building A Global B-School In India

Few opportunities could have convinced Saravanan Kesavan to uproot a prestigious U.S. academic career to return to his home country.

A conversation with Kumar Mangalam Birla, chancellor of BITS Pilani, provided one that could.

Birla Institute of Technology and Science, or BITS Pilani, is one of India’s leading private technical and research universities. Founded in 1964, it one of the country’s top engineering institutions and has been designated an Institute of Eminence by the Indian government.

Birla talked about building a global business school under Pilani’s umbrella. He asked Kesavan to help build it.

“How many people get the chance to build an institution, let alone an educational one?” Kesavan asks.

Two years into the job as dean of BITS School of Management, or BITSoM, Kesavan is trying to turn the relatively young Mumbai school into a global player. BITSoM is growing its MBA, pursuing global accreditation, and experimenting with a visiting-faculty model that brings professors from the U.S., Europe, and Singapore into its classrooms.

Kesavan is building a curriculum around a question confronting virtually every business school: What should management education look like when artificial intelligence is changing faster than schools can teach it?

“The rules that governed business education in the pre-AI world don’t really hold anymore,” Kesavan says. “We’re moving into a very different model, not just in business education but in education broadly.”

A BIGGER MBA, A BROADER BET ON AI

Five years in, BITSoM is enjoying a growth spurt.  While it operates under the aegis of its parent university, it functions as a distinct business school with its own campus in Mumbai.

Its MBA cohort, historically about 160 students, is expanding to 240 this year. Rather than simply packing more students into classrooms, the school is moving from two sections of 80 to four sections of 60, while using the larger cohort to support a broader elective portfolio.

The school has created the BITS Research and AI Innovation Lab, or BRAIN, focused on business applications of artificial intelligence rather than the technology itself. The lab has developed about 30 use cases showing students how AI could change existing business workflows, from procurement to other functional areas. Kesavan also wants to shift more of BITSoM’s roughly 1,300 classroom contact hours toward experiential learning and real-world problem solving.

BITSoM recently launched a fellowship offering full tuition and additional support to students admitted to top-20 global schools, an effort aimed in part at Indians who might otherwise pursue their MBAs in the United States or Europe.

On August 5, BITSoM announced BITSoM VERTEX, an industry-led AI incubator developed with Silicon Valley AI Innovation Studio LENZ. Working with Hack2Skill, the school is launching a nationwide search for Indian AI founders, with a goal of graduating 100 startups through the incubator over the next three years.

VERTEX is designed to give students meaningful exposure to companies trying to build with AI while giving startups access to real business problems and potential customers. Selected companies will get Silicon Valley venture-building mentorship, pathways to enterprise pilots and customer testing as well as investor and funding networks. BITSoM student venture teams will work directly with the startups on areas including business development and market research.

Q&A WITH SARAVANAN KESAVAN 

Kesavan lived in the U.S. for 25 years, moving back to Mumbai two years ago for the chance to build BITSoM. He completed his master’s and PhD at Harvard Business School, and was a fully tenured professor at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School until he was recruited the deanship. 

Underlying his work today is his conviction that AI will strengthen rather than diminish the case for management education. As companies try to move from traditional organizations to AI-enabled ones, the hardest problems won’t necessarily be technical, he argues. They will involve implementation, strategy,  organizational change, and ethics. 

“If there’s one degree I’m most bullish about, it’s the MBA,” he tells Poets&Quants.  

Poets&Quants spoke with Kesavan talks about how a young business school can compete with far older institutions, the changing flow of Indian students between India and the West, and why he believes AI could make the MBA more important, not less. 

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.  

Let’s begin with an introduction, including your academic journey back to India? 

I was born in India and went to Indian Institute of Technology Madras, where I trained as an engineer. I then moved to the U.S., worked for a while, completed my master’s, and spent four years at a supply chain company before pursuing my PhD in retail operations at Harvard Business School. 

I chose retail because my family in India was in the retail business, so I was always fascinated by it and initially wanted to become a retailer. My mother encouraged me to pursue engineering instead, which I did. Eventually, I found my way back to retail through academia, combining both my interests and my parents’ aspirations. 

After completing my PhD at Harvard, I joined UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, where I spent 17 years. When I left, I was a full professor of operations and the associate dean of the full-time MBA program. 

About two years ago, I was recruited to join BITS School of Management as dean, and I’ve been here since.  

For my own curiosity, when you were deciding that you wanted to be an academic, did you consider going into engineering? Why business academia? 

I can find enough reasons for going into business. It’s harder for me to justify why I went into engineering in the first place. My family was in the retail business, so I naturally gravitated toward business. That’s really what I should have done all along. 

But growing up in India in the late ’90s, if you were from a middle-class background, there were really only two paths to move up. One was becoming an engineer, and the other was becoming a doctor. I didn’t want to be a doctor, so I became an engineer. 

Fortunately, things are very different now in India. People pursue all kinds of professions. But back then, it was largely one of those two choices.   

Tell me a little bit about BITSoM and the evolution you’re seeing at the school, and where you would like to take it. 

When I took over two years ago, I wasn’t actively looking for a dean role. Even though I had been an associate dean and knew I would likely become a dean at some point, the timing wasn’t something I had planned. What really made me take this job was my meeting with the chancellor, Kumar Mangalam Birla. He said he wanted to build a global business school and wanted me to help build it. Once he said that, I realized it was an opportunity I couldn’t refuse. How many people get the chance to build an institution, let alone an educational one? 

If you think about my background, I trained at places like Harvard Business School and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School—institutions with long histories, one among the oldest private schools and the other among the oldest public ones. Coming from that environment to a place where you can actually build a school from the ground up is something I hadn’t even imagined. 

What has really helped is the timing. We are in a moment where AI and technology are reshaping education. The rules that governed business education in the pre-AI world don’t really hold anymore. We’re moving into a very different model, not just in business education but in education broadly. Being a new institution gives us a significant advantage because we can experiment with different models and remain highly agile. 

For example, about 90% of our courses are taught by visiting professors from the U.S., Europe, and Singapore. That gives me tremendous flexibility. I can bring in people who are actively working in critical areas like AI and have them teach here. That’s not something most traditional schools can do. In those environments, deans typically have to rely on existing faculty to upskill and then teach emerging topics, which is not an easy process. 

Because we are new, we have a real advantage in getting the latest developments into the classroom faster than almost anyone else.   

When you’re talking about AI and the advantages of being a new entrant, are you doing anything different beyond the visiting professor model? How are you delivering education? 

First, let me say that it’s not like I know exactly how this is going to evolve. AI is such a rapidly moving area that the frontier is constantly expanding. Honestly, I don’t think anyone fully understands its implications across different domains, including education. In that kind of dynamic environment, what matters is the ability to experiment, to try different approaches, and to stay as close to the frontier as possible so we can bring that knowledge quickly to students. 

The most important thing we’re doing at BITSoM is experimenting with different ways of integrating AI into the learning experience. Teaching an AI course is actually the easiest part. What excites me more are the broader initiatives around it. 

One example is our AI lab, the BITS Research and AI Innovation Lab (BRAIN). Typically, labs like this exist in engineering schools, but we’ve brought one into a business school with a different objective. Instead of focusing on the technical side of AI, we focus on business applications. We’ve built a repository of about 30 use cases—an expanding library developed in-house—so students can understand how AI can be deployed in real-world settings. 

These use cases are structured around specific business scenarios. For example, we might take a procurement operation in a supply chain organization, show how it works today, and then demonstrate how the same workflow changes when AI is introduced. This helps students visualize how the future of work might evolve. I’m not claiming these models perfectly predict the future, but they offer plausible directions. Students can also engage with these cases, modify them, and propose alternative ways AI could reshape those workflows. 

Another major initiative is our AI accelerator program. We’re setting this up in partnership with a Silicon Valley-based company. The idea is to bring in Indian startup companies and have them work on real enterprise problems sourced from large organizations we partner with. 

The value for startups is that they have a customer from day one. For us, the value is deeply integrated learning. Each cohort will include about 15 to 20 startups, with four to five students assigned to each. Students learn foundational concepts in the classroom, work on corporate projects, and then engage directly with startups, which forces them to think across multiple dimensions of building AI-driven businesses. 

This ties into a broader shift in business education. The experiential component has to grow significantly. That’s where we’re focusing—designing programs that push students beyond theory into real-world problem-solving and execution.  

When you talk about building a global business school in India, how are you thinking about changes in student mobility? Are you trying to retain Indian students who would have gone abroad, or attract international students? What is your goal? 

We definitely want to capture some of the students who previously would have gone to the U.S. or Europe. For many years, the best students from India were going to the U.S., and the U.S. benefited tremendously from that. I spent 25 years of my own career there. 

Now, for various reasons, many students are feeling more uncertain about going abroad. MBA programs, in particular, require a significant financial investment, and when there’s uncertainty about the future, that doesn’t inspire confidence to make that kind of commitment. 

So schools like BITSoM—and others as well—are seeing an opportunity to attract these highly talented students who are now reconsidering their options. At BITSoM, for example, we recently launched a fellowship program for students who have been admitted to top 20 schools globally. If they choose to come here, we offer a 100% tuition waiver along with additional support. 

We’re already seeing this shift. Just a few days ago, a student who completed undergraduate studies at New York University visited campus. He had returned to India and is now planning to pursue his MBA here. 

So we’re seeing both trends: Indian students who might have gone abroad are now considering options within India, and students who did go abroad for undergraduate studies are returning for their MBA.  

Do you think India could attract students from other countries? Is that part of your goal? 

That would be great, and I do think there is a market for it. In terms of education, India is one of the leading countries in the Southeast Asia region, so it should be an attractive destination for international students. 

The challenge isn’t just the education itself. Typically, when students go abroad, they are also looking for opportunities to live and work in that country for a few years after graduation. That’s an important part of the decision. 

As economic prospects in India continue to improve—which they are—I think that will change. India is now the fourth-largest economy and is expected to become the third-largest. As more opportunities open up, we will likely see more international students coming to study here and staying on to work for a few years afterward. 

If BITSoM aims to attract international students, would that require accreditation similar to AACSB, EQUIS, and AMBA in the U.S. and Europe? What are you doing in that regard? 

We want to be a global business school, which means we need to be globally accredited. So AACSB, EQUIS, and AMBA are all central to our goals. That said, these accreditations require a few years of runway. We’ve only recently started working earnestly toward them. 

I’ve personally attended some of the conferences related to these accreditations, and we’ve begun laying the groundwork. Over the coming year, we’ll be more actively pursuing them. 

Are you prioritizing on one over the others? 

There are nuances in deciding which ones to prioritize. For example, AMBA has limitations in terms of how many schools it accredits globally and is evolving its approach. So we have to carefully evaluate each path. 

In fact, I’ve just recruited a deputy dean who will be taking over next week, and one of his primary responsibilities will be to lead our accreditation efforts.   

Tell me a little about what sets BITSoM apart in terms of the student experience and program design. What are your differentiators? 

I think there are several differentiators, starting with how we admit students. Some of the top schools in India, like the IIMs, place significant weight on entrance exams such as the CAT. We take a more holistic approach. Applicants can submit a CAT, GMAT, or GRE score, but we also place substantial weight on interviews and essays. This aligns more closely with global admissions models rather than relying heavily on a single test. As a result, our students tend to be more well-rounded, with strong communication skills. 

The second important aspect is that BITSoM is part of BITS Pilani, which has been around for about 60 years and is recognized as an Institute of Eminence. It is one of the top engineering institutions in India. This connection is especially valuable in the context of AI. We are able to leverage engineering expertise and AI capabilities across BITS Pilani’s campuses to build a curriculum that integrates both technical and managerial perspectives. 

The third differentiator is our strong focus on professional and personal development. From the beginning, we’ve emphasized that education is not just about core academic courses. We have a set of about 18 courses called “Winning at the Workplace,” which focus on areas like communication, self-awareness, and leadership. Students even go through elements like drama training to learn how to express themselves effectively. These are skills that are critical for career progression but are often overlooked in traditional MBA programs. 

Finally, in terms of intensity, our program includes about 1,300 classroom contact hours, which is significantly higher than most programs. Even the top schools in the country typically offer closer to 900 hours.  

Is that all classroom face time? How does that align with the experiential approach you want to bring in? 

In fact, having so many classroom hours has been both good and bad. The good part is that it gives us room to carve out some of those hours and replace them with more experiential components, which is the direction we’re moving toward. 

The downside is that when students are sitting through class after class, there’s a real risk of fatigue. Once students have secured jobs, it becomes even harder to keep them engaged through that level of rigor. At that point, no amount of structure can really force that kind of sustained classroom focus. 

So the responsibility is on the school to make the experience more impactful. That’s why we’re shifting more toward experiential learning and trying to rebalance how students spend their time.   

Do you see growth as part of your goals? Have you seen an increase in MBA applications with changes in student mobility, and is growth something you want to pursue? 

The growth opportunity definitely exists. In the U.S., even top 20 schools often have acceptance rates of 30% to 40%. Here, our acceptance rate is about 2%, so the demand is extremely high. 

That said, any growth has to be meaningful. We have to ensure that we continue to deliver a high-quality product and maintain the standard of education. The demand for MBA programs in India is strong enough that we could expand, but we are being very deliberate and cautious about how we grow. 

At the end of the day, I would rather have a smaller class that is done really well than a much larger class that is average. That’s not the goal. 

As I mentioned earlier, the chancellor’s vision is to build a global business school. That’s one of the main reasons I left the U.S. and came here—to help build an institution that can truly stand out, not just become another business school in India.   

What is your cohort size, typically? 

We’ve typically had about 160 students per year. It’s a two-year program, and this year we’re increasing that to 240. 

Why the increase? 

The increase brings several benefits. With more students, we can offer a wider range of electives. At 160, it was a bit limiting. If we offered multiple electives, some classes might end up with only 15 students, while others could have 80 or 100. With 240 students, we can expand the number of electives and give students more flexibility to explore different areas, which makes for a richer educational experience. 

At the same time, we’re not scaling up to an unmanageable size. Previously, we had two sections of 80 students. Now we’re moving to four sections of 60 students each. So even though the overall cohort is larger, the section size is actually smaller. That means students will receive more individualized attention and have more interaction with faculty.   

It’s interesting to see an MBA program actively expanding when, in the U.S. and Europe, there’s talk of it being a mature product amid geopolitical shifts, changing student mobility, and AI. What do you think about the value of an MBA today, particularly in India? 

I don’t think it’s just India. Honestly, if there’s one degree I’m most bullish about, it’s the MBA. I really believe that with AI, the MBA should be doing extremely well. 

The nature of work is changing. How work gets done in organizations will look very different in the next three to five years because of AI. At the same time, 99.9% of companies in the world are still traditional organizations. There’s only a small fraction of digital-native or AI-native companies. 

Now you have this powerful tool—AI—that can potentially improve productivity by 40% to 100% or more. Companies will be forced to adopt it. If your competitor adopts AI and boosts productivity by 30%, you either adopt it to maintain parity or risk falling behind. 

So companies have to transition from where they are today to becoming AI-enabled organizations. That transition is the hardest part of the AI revolution. The technical side is one challenge, but implementing AI within organizations is much more complex. 

When you talk to managers, you see a wide spectrum. Some are ignoring it altogether. Some think it’s a passing trend. Others talk about AI constantly but don’t fully understand it—they equate AI with tools like ChatGPT. There’s a significant gap in understanding, and that’s where change management becomes critical. 

Who is going to drive that change, in your opinion?

In many cases, it will be MBA graduates. They are the ones who can bridge strategy, operations, and technology and help organizations move up the value chain. 

I recently had a roundtable with about 18 executives from global capability centers in India—what used to be called the outsourcing industry. These centers have evolved significantly. They now employ around 2 million people, contribute about $60 billion, and account for roughly 2% of India’s GDP. They’re expected to grow further, potentially doubling the workforce. 

Across the board, these executives agreed that AI will fundamentally reshape their industry, and there is a major talent gap. They need people who understand AI in a business context. In fact, some of them said they prefer hiring fresh MBA graduates over experienced professionals because younger graduates are often more adaptable and open to new technologies. 

So I see the prospects for the MBA as extremely strong—not just in India, but globally.   

What should readers understand about the future of the MBA in the age of AI, and how should they be thinking about it right now? 

I believe the MBA is going to be absolutely critical. Even for those who don’t pursue an MBA, there is an urgent need to upskill in AI—not necessarily in the technical aspects, but in understanding the tools and how to use them to become significantly more productive. 

If your productivity is not increasing by 30% to 100% in the near future, your job could be at risk. Many companies are already slowing hiring. When attrition happens, managers are increasingly asking: Why hire a replacement when AI might be able to do the job? 

So the message to readers is clear: the time to act is now. If you haven’t already started adapting, you need to get on this AI wave. This shift is real. 

For those in the typical MBA age range—early to mid-20s—this is actually a great time to go back to school. But it’s important to choose the right program. You should be looking for a school that is forward-looking in how it integrates AI into its curriculum. 

If a program cannot clearly explain how it will prepare you for the next few years—say, up to 2030—then that’s a concern. At one time, business schools aimed to prepare students for decades-long careers. That’s no longer realistic. Today, the focus has to be on equipping students with the most relevant, in-demand skills when they graduate. 

At BITSoM, that’s something we’re very focused on. Even though the landscape is evolving quickly and skills can become outdated within months, the goal is to ensure students leave with capabilities that are immediately valuable in the market and relevant for the next two to five years.   

How is BITSoM engaging with the ethical implications of AI, given concerns around job displacement, societal impact, and environmental costs? 

That’s a great question, and it’s exactly why I think MBAs are the right people to engage with these issues. If you look at engineers or others working directly on AI, they often approach it in a more narrow, technical way. Right now, a lot of AI development is being driven by a relatively small group of developers, and many of them haven’t necessarily been trained in ethics, philosophy, or broader societal considerations. 

In contrast, business schools—and MBA programs in particular—are where students are trained to look at problems from a 360-degree perspective. That has always been one of the core strengths of an MBA. Students are taught to consider not just the technical or financial aspects, but also the ethical, social, and strategic implications of decisions. 

At the end of the day, in organizations, it’s the business leader who is accountable. If a product is launched and something goes wrong, it’s typically the head of the business who is held responsible—not the engineer. Because of that responsibility, business leaders are forced to think more broadly. 

They have to consider ethical implications, data integrity, sovereignty issues, and a range of other factors. These are not optional considerations—they are central to decision-making. 

So in many ways, MBA programs are exactly where this kind of thinking needs to be developed. Business education has to prepare leaders who can navigate these complex trade-offs, and that’s why I believe the MBA is so critical in the age of AI.  

Can you give me a sense of the startup ecosystem in Mumbai and how your school connects with it? 

The startup scene is active, though a large concentration of startups in India is still in the south, particularly in cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad. Mumbai does have startups, but the broader ecosystem across India is quite distributed. 

That’s why the AI accelerator program we’re building is designed as a national initiative. We’re not limiting ourselves to Mumbai. We plan to bring in top startup talent from across the country, bring them to BITSoM, and have them work on real enterprise problems in collaboration with large organizations, alongside our students. 

We already have several major companies that have agreed to partner with us, which is very encouraging. The idea is to create a platform where startups, enterprises, and students all interact in a meaningful way. 

DON’T MISS: ‘BOTH-AND’ LEADERSHIP IN THE AGE OF AI: NOTRE DAME’S DEAN ON THE FUTURE OF THE MBA AND CÉDRIC DENIS-RÉMIS ON BUILDING ESCP’S ‘MIT IN REVERSE’ 

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