23 IITs, 21 IIMs And 23 AIIMS: Is Replication Diluting Their Brand Value?

Here’s a quick quiz question: how many IITs are there in India and where are they? Chances are you would say Kharagpur, Kanpur, Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay) and maybe Chennai (Madras). That is five if you got them all. There are actually 23 IITs in India now. The first was set up in 1951 in Kharagpur and there was some gap between the first five and the sixth. There are also 25 IIITs or Indian Institute of Information Technologies, some well-known and some not. They’re often confused with IITs.

How many IIMs do you know of? Most would think of Ahmedabad, Calcutta (Kolkata), Bangalore and Kozhikode. There are currently 21 IIMs in India. And how many AIIMS do you think one can name? Most would think of AIIMS in Delhi. But there are 23, some of which are still under construction.

A promoter of a steel company in Maharashtra once told me industries in India can go to overcapacity very quickly, so much so that they become uneconomical and unviable. This includes television news. There are close to 390 news channels and it is a recurring mystery how they survive, even accounting for vanity capital.

It didn’t strike me until Shantanu Rooj of TeamLease Edtech pointed out that what we are seeing now is perhaps the early signs of overcapacity and brand dilution. This is not an argument against more medical, engineering or management seats but the clubbing of them under the IIT or IIM brands. Do you know how many B Schools there are in India? Depending on whom you ask, the answer can vary between 3,000 and 6,000.

A senior professor at an American Ivy League college once spoke to me about why they were not expanding into India. He explained at that time while they were exploring campuses in a few locations and would want to explain if Indian regulations permitted, they would always maintain them as satellites of the main institution. His point was that there could only be one Stanford, Harvard or Columbia.

Admittedly, the nature of education delivery has changed in recent years. The Ivy Leagues now have several layers of offerings, ranging from online and offline or hybrid executive programmes to entirely online programmes. I have often noted Harvard Business School certificates on the walls of office cabins I have visited. On closer inspection, they turn out to be advanced management programme certificates and not the full degree.

This deluge of options to get degrees has not diluted the core brand and proposition. Possibly because there is careful delineation of courses and offerings, even as more students are sought out. Or the original brand can withstand some dilution thanks to growth because it's been around for a few hundred years. Whatever the reason, it is clear that the institutions back in India seem to be seeing a dilution in their brand and standing be it the IITs, IIMs or AIIMs. However, the original few still stand out because of their strong faculty, research strength and body of work.

The way forward is to do a proper brand audit, including a performance audit, of these newly minted colleges both from a student and prospective employer point of view. It does not seem logical that institutions can be replicated at such a scale without compromising several factors. Institutes of learning are not assembly-line automobile factories which can be replicated and expanded with the push of a button.