Sonia Tiwari, who graduated with a BTech in Computer Science in 2021, found herself in a bit of a dilemma — she had an offer from an IT major for a programming job alongside being admitted to a two-year business degree at a middle B school. Since the salary package offered did not meet her expectations, she decided to study business administration. Sonia is among over 4,00,000 Indian students who will study MBA in 2022.

Sonia’s choice is not surprising. After a gradual decline in the number of B schools and student enrollments in India – from 4.56,000 students at 3,608 institutes in 2014-15 to 3.72,000 students at 3,037 institutes in 2019-20 – enrollment increased to 4 ,03,000 students at 3,107 institutes in 2021 -22.

That’s not all. As companies recover from two bad years, more and more companies are looking to B-School students, resulting in much better rankings. Consulting firms are still the largest recruiters. They hired 31% of students at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and accounted for 36% of the hiring at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

The starting salaries are also higher. The average annual salaries of the top 12 business schools have increased by 30% in 2022. While it was highest at 34.20 lakh at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), the Indian Institute of Management saw Kozhikode (IIM-K). a jump of 30% – from 22.53 lakh in 2021 to 29.50 lakh in 2022.

As the demand for business education increases, Indian B schools continue to develop. On one level, they are spreading their wings to meet increasing demand by opening new campuses in different locations. Second, they are revamping their curriculum to include in-demand topics such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, business intelligence, data visualization, and gamification.

What began as three Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata is now a thriving network of 20 institutes across the country. Among the private institutes, the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies Mumbai now also has campuses in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Indore; Symbiosis Institute of Business Management Pune has spread to Bangalore, Hyderabad and Nagpur; The International Management Institute Delhi also has campuses in Bhubaneswar and Kolkata, while MDI Gurgaon has opened a new campus in Murshidabad. Schools are also spreading their wings around the world. Based in Mumbai, SP Jain School of Global Management has campuses in Dubai, Singapore and Sydney.

Even as business schools expand domestically and internationally, their eyes are also on global recognition – a stepping stone to not only becoming an attractive destination for global students, but also eventually opening campuses worldwide. B-Schools do their best for global accreditation. The most prestigious is the Triple Crown – a B-School accredited by the Association of MBA’s (AMBA) in the UK, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) in the US and EQUIS by EFMD based in the EU. of the business schools are triple accredited. India currently has three schools with triple accreditation – Indian School of Business Hyderabad, IIM Calcutta and IIM Indore. Of 28 B-Schools globally accredited in the country, 19 are AACSB-accredited, 16 are AMBA-accredited and six are EQUIS-accredited.

One consequence of uncertain economic conditions and the looming global recession is entrepreneurship at B schools. Despite the rise of unicorns ($1 billion or more startups) in the country, there are fewer B-schoolers willing to take the entrepreneurial leap. Instead, they want to work in the corporate sector for a few years. This is largely due to the challenges Indian startups have faced over the past 12 months and struggled to raise the next rounds of funding.