IIMB in Spotlight
IIMB Honoured for Sustainability, Biodiversity, and Community Impact
IIM Bangalore has earned three major honours at the ELCITA Sustainability Awards—Silver in the “Educational, Hospitality & Research Organizations” category, along with awards for Excellence in Biodiversity Management and Excellence in Social Welfare and Community Services. The recognition reflects the institute’s integrated approach to sustainability, spanning water and energy conservation, biodiversity preservation, and community engagement.
The awards celebrate organisations demonstrating impactful environmental action across diverse areas such as renewable energy, waste management, green infrastructure, and sustainability reporting. Accepting the awards on behalf of the institute, IIMB’s administrative team reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening eco-conscious practices on campus.
Professor Haritha Saranga, Chairperson of the Sustainability Taskforce, noted that while the recognition highlights meaningful progress, there is still much more to achieve. These milestones reaffirm IIMB’s collective responsibility to keep innovating, acting, and inspiring for a greener, more inclusive future, setting benchmarks for educational institutions nationwide.
Best Paper Award at ICFMCF 2025 for IIMB Researchers
A research study led by Doctoral Programme scholar M. Joel Christopher, in collaboration with Professors Sankarshan Basu, Nitin Vishen, and Abhinav Anand from the Finance & Accounting area, has won the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Financial Markets & Corporate Finance.
The award-winning paper, “Banking Against the Odds: Performance and Lending Efficiency of Government Banks During Crisis”, challenges long-standing assumptions about inefficiency in public sector banks. Using a rigorous difference-in-differences methodology, the researchers analysed how Indian government banks performed during COVID-19, revealing resilience and critical contributions to sustaining credit flow.
This work enriches both academic and policy discussions by highlighting the role of public sector banks in stabilising the financial system during crises. The recognition underscores IIMB’s strong research ecosystem and the value of collaborative scholarship that engages with pressing national and global challenges in finance and public policy.
Doctoral Scholar from IIMB Wins Recognition at Oxford Conference
Gopinath Annadurai, a doctoral student in Public Policy at IIMB, has received an Honorable Mention for Best PhD Paper at the Global Research Conference on Caste, Business and Society, hosted by SaĂŻd Business School, University of Oxford.
His paper, “India Lives in Her Caste Hamlets: Rethinking the Village in Caste-Divided Rural India”, offers the first nationwide analysis of caste-based residential segregation within villages. Drawing on administrative data from over 1.7 million hamlets, Gopinath demonstrates how caste hierarchies shape not just inter-village differences but also intra-village settlement patterns.
The study reframes the classic notion that “India lives in her villages” by revealing how deeply entrenched caste structures govern rural life. These insights carry significant implications for development policy, social justice, and resource allocation. His broader research combines large-scale data, political economy, and spatial analysis to study mobility and access among historically marginalised groups.
First PhD Graduate from NSR Pre-doc Fellowship
A milestone moment for IIMB’s N. S. Ramaswamy Pre-doctoral Fellowship was marked as Muhammed Sadiq, from the programme’s inaugural cohort, became its first PhD graduate. He successfully completed his doctorate in Information Systems at IIT Madras, with a thesis on health misinformation on social media.
Sadiq’s research explored psychological drivers behind misinformation sharing, the role of digital nudges in curbing its spread, and broader implications for public health communication. His work has led to international publications and collaborations, including a visiting research position at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Expressing gratitude to IIMB mentors for shaping his academic journey, Sadiq credited the Pre-doc programme for laying the foundation of his scholarly career. With over 50 Fellows admitted into PhD programmes worldwide, his success underscores the fellowship’s role in building a diverse and impactful pipeline of management researchers for leading institutions across the globe.
