Looking at the potentials in the retail and insurance sectors, the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad has decided to set up a Centre for Retailing and a Centre for Research in Insurance. This was decided at the meeting of it board of governors on Monday.

While the institute has gone for a strategic alliance with the FMCG giant Hindustan Lever Ltd for the Centre for Retailing, one of the major players in the global insurance industry, Aviva, has joined hands with the institute for developing the Centre for Research in Insurance.

Sharing the details of the decision, Bakul Dholakia, director of IIM-A said, "The main purpose of the proposed Centre for Retailing will be to exploit and enhance the existing intellectual capital engaged in retailing and to augment interaction between academia and industry in India to promote developmental activities in organised retailing."

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HLL will pay Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million) every year for five years for setting up the infrastructure for research and data creation and other activities of the Centre. The new Centre is expected to start functioning in next one month.

"The mission of the Centre will be to generate and disseminate knowledge on the management of retailing with the object of importing management practice to improve the efficiency and the quality of delivery of products and services for the end consumer," said Dholakia.

"The Centre will also develop teaching and training materials. The second year students of Post-Graduate Programme of IIM-A will also have an option to take Retail Management as one of the elective subjects," he said.

The major responsibilities of IIM-A for the Centre will include undertaking and carrying out projects as approved by the Centre, to motivate academia to undertake research and consultancy projects related to different aspects of retailing and also to provide necessary infrastructural support in terms of faculty time, space, computational, managerial and administrative support.

"While we have already introduced one elective paper for the second year students in PGP on both health and life insurance as the insurance sector is emerging steady fast and the global insurance majors are looking at opportunities in India, the Board of the Institute on Monday also decided to open a Centre for Research in Insurance which will be sponsored by Aviva and we are yet to finalise the amount of money to be required for running the Centre and Aviva would have to pay towards meeting the cost," said Dholakia.

He also said the Centre will also undertake research in policy-making and it will also keep sending suggestions to regulatory bodies like Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority.