The Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy and Management (PGPPM) at IIM Bangalore hosted a two-day edition of its annual PGPPM Policy Talk Series on 24^th and 25^th September 2026. The series brings together practitioners from governance, education, industry and public policy to engage with the PGPPM cohort on contemporary policy challenges and the practical dimensions of policy implementation.

The series opened on 24^th September with a Governance Masterclass by Shailiza Mayal, Vice President, Samagra. Her session explored what it takes to translate policy intent into effective implementation and to build public systems that deliver at scale.

The session on Day Two featured Akshay Saxena, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Avanti Fellows. His talk, titled ‘Talent is Everywhere, Opportunity is Not: Can Public Policy Create Real Educational Mobility?’, examined educational opportunity and equity, and the role public policy can play in creating pathways for high-potential students from underserved communities.

The Supply Chain Management Centre (SCMC), in association with Gurobi and DecisionOpt, hosted a special program on ‘Agentic AI for Optimization’ on 26^th September 2026.

The Centre for Software and Information Technology Management (CSITM) hosted a session on ‘Leadership in the Agentic Economy’, led by Katja Forbes, author of Machine Customers: The Evolution Has Begun and an Advisor to Forrester on Agentic Commerce. The session was held on 29^th September 2026.

With the core objective of shaping the vision, possibilities and priorities for the next era of mobility, the IIMB Alumni Association (IIMBAA) Bangalore Chapter, through its Mobility Special Interest Group (SIG), hosted the 5th edition of the Global Mobility Summit on 26^th September 2026 at the IIMB Auditorium. The Global Mobility Summit 2026, themed on ‘MOBILITY 2.0 – Gearing for Transformation’, brought together more than 200 CXOs, mobility and automotive leaders, policymakers, as well as representatives from technology companies, start-ups, academia and the wider mobility ecosystem. This year’s theme reflected the shift from traditional mobility towards software-defined, intelligent, connected, electrified and sustainable ecosystems.

Dr. Anirudh Dhawan, faculty in the Finance & Accounting area at IIMB, has been appointed Subject Editor at the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money (JIFMIM), a leading international peer-reviewed journal.

Dr. Dhawan’s research interests at IIMB span behavioural finance, financial markets and experimental finance, with his editorial appointment bringing this expertise to the journal’s evaluation and development of research in the field.

JIFMIM publishes rigorous, original research on the international dimensions of financial markets, institutions and monetary systems, including the evolving dynamics of foreign-currency-denominated transactions and their implications for financial markets.

The journal is ranked A in the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) Journal Quality List and 3 in the Academic Journal Guide (ABS).

IIM Bangalore has entered into two significant collaborations with the Ministry of Minority Affairs, Government of India, and the National Minorities Development & Finance Corporation (NMDFC), which will leverage the Institute’s strengths in public policy, entrepreneurship and innovation to support public initiatives aimed at creating inclusive and sustainable economic opportunities.

In the presence of Dr. Srivatsa Krishna, Secretary, MoMA, the MoUs were signed and exchanged by Mr. S P Roy, Joint Secretary, MoMA; Mr. Nixon Mathur, General Manager, NMDFC; Dr. U Dinesh Kumar, Director-in-charge, IIMB; and Ms. Rasika Prashant, CEO, IIMB Innovations (NSRCEL), at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, on 25th September 2026. The partnerships mark an expansion of IIMB’s engagement with public institutions on initiatives that require rigorous evidence, institutional capacity and outcome-oriented implementation.

At an Insight Talk by BSmart Business Standard on the theme ‘The AI-first MBA: What should we still teach students when AI can do almost everything’, Dr. Mukta Kulkarni, Dean, Programmes, IIM Bangalore, joined Prof. Aditya Mohan Jadhav, Founding Dean, TAPMI; Dr. Umesh Kothari, SP Jain School of Global Management; and Dr. Sandhya Haridas, VP & Global Delivery Unit Head, L&T Technology Services, to discuss how AI is reshaping management education.

Dr. Mukta discouraged framing discourse surrounding the adoption of AI in teaching and learning as “professor versus AI”. The future, she said, is about “professor and AI”. With AI taking over transactional and repetitive aspects of teaching, faculty can spend more time on what is deeply human – building communities, bringing in a variety of opinions, challenging students, guiding them through ambiguity, and helping them unlearn and rethink.

The shift is also changing how students are assessed at IIMB. Prof. Mukta shared the example of courses where students have traditionally written reports drawing on primary and secondary data from organizations. The focus is now on whether students can understand, defend and extend the work they have done. She also spoke about an “AI-native midterm” developed by a faculty member, where students build chatbots and are assessed on prompt engineering and optimization techniques.

Prof. Mukta does not discourage students from using AI agents. The more important question, she said, is what they do with the output. Students need to test AI-generated responses, introduce counterfactuals and question answers that sound polished but lack specificity or nuance.

“Our careers are not just about our expertise – so much more makes us good humans”, she said. For her, that is where the larger purpose of management education lies: AI can expand what students can do, but education must continue to shape how they think, engage with others and navigate the world.

The panel also examined AI’s implications in decision-making, the importance of contextual and judgmental intelligence, and the changing expectations from management graduates as AI becomes embedded across industries.

The Office of Research & Publications at IIMB will host a research seminar titled ‘Impact and Incidence of Housing Subsidies in Urban Slums: Evidence from India’, delivered by Prof. Sabareesh Ramachandran, Indian School of Business. The session will be held on 8^th October 2026, in Classroom K-21, at 4.00 pm.

Fixit, a start-up of NSRCEL, has received support from the Government of India (GoI) through the Technology Development Board (TDB), Department of Science & Technology (DST), to deepen its AI capabilities. Fixit is an agentic AI platform aimed at helping businesses automate revenue workflows and turn demand into growth.

Dartle, a start-up of NSRCEL from Velocity, raised $100,000 in seed funding, led by Inflection Point Ventures, to expand its US presence and strengthen its AI capabilities. The Kerala-based sports-tech start-up is in the process of building a B2B SaaS platform for youth sports and football academies, with plans to scale its international customer base.