Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM Bangalore or IIMB) is a reputed business school and an Institute of National Importance located in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Founded in 1973, it was chronologically the third in the first generation of IIMs to be established, after IIM Calcutta and IIM Ahmedabad, thereby forming the elite Indian B-School trio colloquially known as 'ABC', or 'IIM A/B/C'.
IIMB was established by the Government of India (GoI) as an institute of excellence for education, training, research, and consulting in the field of management, and allied areas of knowledge. The Indian government called on IIMB to assist and mentor the two newly established IIMs during their inception period - IIM Trichy in 2011, and IIM Visakhapatnam in 2015.
IIMB offers bachelor's, master's, PG diploma, PG certificate fellowship, and doctoral programmes in business administration, business analytics, digital business, entrepreneurship, management, public policy, administration, and corporate governance. The institute also offers Executive Education programmes for corporates, entrepreneurs, government officials, and non-profit organisations. The two-year PGP and one-year EPGP, MBA in general management are the flagship programmes of the institute.
In 1972, a committee headed by Ravi J. Matthai, first director of IIM Ahmedabad and co-founder of IRMA, noting the rising demand for graduates of the first two IIMs (namely, IIMC and IIMA), recommended the need to have two more IIMs. The new IIM was to be set up at Bangalore, and for the proposed institute, the Government of Karnataka offered 105 acres (42 ha) of land (free of cost), and a contribution of INR 3 million (~US$ 390,000 in 1972). Ultimately, on 27 March 1972, the IIMB Society was officially registered in Bangalore under the Mysore Societies' Registration Act.
The prominent Indian banker T.A. Pai, the Ex-Chairman of Syndicate Bank and Life Insurance Corporation, accepted to be the first Chairperson of the IIMB Board of Governors, and N.S. Iyer Ramaswamy, the then director of NITIE Mumbai, was appointed as the first Director of the institute. The institute was inaugurated by Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, on 28 October 1973 at the Ravindra Kalakshetra in Bangalore. And, though it was not a legally-binding mandate from the Indian government, the first director tried to mold IIMB to cater to the needs of govt-owned entities like PSUs/PSEs, utility corporations, etc. due to his own left-leaning persuasions.
The institute started operations in the campus of St. Joseph's College of Commerce, and some other buildings rented on the Langford Road in the city. The institute's first activity was a three-day conference in 1973, on urban development and management, which invited officials from all municipal corporations in Karnataka. Thereafter, IIMB started conducting Management Development Programmes (MDPs) and Organisation Based Programmes (OBPs) for public (govt.) sectors like power, irrigation, health, etc.
The first PG management course (called PGP) started in 1974, and the first doctoral course (called FPM) started in 1976. The institute held its first convocation on 10 July 1976 with a total of 48 graduating students, and on the same day the board also announced the appointment of architects for designing the official campus. On 27 November 1978, the 'Guddalipooja' (groundbreaking) ceremony of the campus on Bannerghatta Road was performed. In 1979, the institute started separate sections for sector-wise PGP courses, and in 1980 the first fellowship diploma (FPM) was awarded. IIMB moved operations to its own campus in 1983.
The government sectors and entities did not show interest in IIMB's initiatives, and even by the 1980s, the institute could only get marginal success. Moreover, the employee union had co-opted external political leadership unconcerned with the institute's vision leading to severe dysfunction, and then resignation of the Director in mid-1983. Thereafter, for two years IIMB had no permanent Director, and further stagnated. The faculty was also split into 'sectoral' and 'business management' wings which had severe disagreements with each other. Thus, the institute encountered a period of serious crisis, administratively, and identity-wise.
Finally, Joe Philip was appointed by the board on the 15 April 1985 with a clear mandate to bring back discipline and morale to the institute. He had previously worked as VP (HR) at The Oberoi Group, and had experience in dealing with manpower issues. He believed in Management by objectives (MBO), and under his charge, IIMB also started shifting away from its 'state-corp' focus. During his tenure PGP courses were redesigned, student intakes increased, faculty workloads modified, and performance assessments formalised. The sector-wise sections were also discontinued by 1986. The almost-dead FPM course was resuscitated by changing it from being sector-focussed to business management areas. He was also instrumental in IIMB partnership with the European Commission EFMD to initiate the faculty development programme in 1988-89. Importantly, in August 1990, he was also able to wrest control of the Director's office from the union's illegal occupation after more than six years.
Dr. K.R.S. Murthy was appointed the Director on 11 February 1991 and remained till 28 February 1997. His tenure coincided with the economic liberalisation in India, and is mainly credited for driving the institute towards excellence. The PGP curriculum was further revised in 1991-92 to align it with global MBA programs. For manufacturing industries, a Management Program for Technologists (MPT) was started for mid-level engineers in 1992, along with another short-term program for senior executives in collaboration with MIT Sloan. IIMB became the first Indian B-School to have internet on campus (via ERNET) in December 1995, within four months of national internet launch.
In 1996, the management icon Dr. Henry Mintzberg selected IIM Bangalore over other Indian B-Schools as one of the five international founding-members of the IMPM Consortium. In 1998, the DoPT (GoI), in partnership with UNDP, selected IIMB to setup a Centre for Public Policy (CPP) which ultimately came up in July 2000. The institute got considerable endowment from an alumnus in 1999 to power-up the NSRCEL incubation centre.
The reforms and developments brought a successful turnaround, and wider recognition. In 2000, the Business Today magazine ranked IIMB the 1st in India in their BT-Cosmode Top 100 B-Schools survey. In 2003, The Wall Street Journal included IIMB among the top-100 B-Schools globally, in the unranked list of Next 50 B-Schools. India's key IT entity, NASSCOM, selected IIMB in 2005 for the Best India IT User Award in the education category. As of 2024, IIM Bangalore was the only Indian B-School in GNAM, an international collaboration convened by the Yale School of Management.
The official motto of the institute is the Sanskrit phrase तेजस्वि नावधीतमस्तु, and was adopted in the session 1991-92. It is pronounced as [t̪eːɟəsvi nɑːvəd̪ʰiːt̪əməst̪u] as per the IPA phonetic transcription; and is romanised (with diacritics) as tejasvi nāvadhītamastu as per the IAST, ALA-LC, UNRSGN, and ISO 15919 standards, or as tejasvi naavdhiitamastu as per the ASCII schemes of ITRANS and Velthuis both. It is a Sanskrit Shloka extracted from the Shanti Mantra invocated in the Taittiriya Upanishad, and the Katha Upanishad, two of the constituent texts of the Yajurveda. The motto translates to "Let our study be enlightening".
The IIMB's official logo is a depiction of the top-half of a blazing sun with stylised rays prominently emanating from it. The image is in the style of a negative space picture with intense red colour in the background of rays (as half-disc), while the sun, rays, and other space in logo are in white colour (or empty). The text 'IIMB' is written in black (in a sans-serif font) in the centre of the depicted sun, and the Sanskrit motto is written in black (in Devanagari script) below the sun. It was designed by the National Institute of Design, and has been in use since 1994. The hue of the red colour used in the logo is also used as the de facto official colour of IIMB for all practical purposes, often matched with white, grey, or black.
A celebratory logo for short-term special-use was designed by the institute to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of its establishment. It was released on the 28 December 2022, before the beginning of Golden Jubilee celebrations scheduled in the academic session 2023-24. It was used for specific purposes and events marking the semicentennial occasion, like the special postal cover released by the India Post, and the Golden Jubilee Week events from 26 to 29 October 2023.
IIMB's main campus is located on the Bannerghatta Road in Bilekahalli suburb in the southern part of the metro-city of Bangalore. It occupies an area of around 105 acres, and has a non-urban feel with ample greenery. As of 2024, IIMB was setting up a 110 acres-large second campus 20 km away near Jigani, in the city's periphery, in Anekal Taluka of the Bangalore Urban district.
The campus is accessible by private or public transport from anywhere in the city via bike, car, taxi, or bus. A nearby bus-stop named 'IIMB' is served adequately by the BMTC, and is 13 km from the central Kempegowda (Majestic) Bus Station which offers intra-city, inter-city, and inter-state bus services. The campus is ~13 km from KSR City Junction, ~13 km from Cantt. Railway Station, and ~44 km from Kempegowda International Airport. An 'IIMB' named metro station on the Namma Metro's Pink Line is planned to be launched in September 2025 (with 'Phase-I' as per 2024-Q2 updates on the project).
The design of IIMB campus was led by the famous architect B.V. Doshi, FRIBA, the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, RIBA 2022 Royal Gold Medal recipient and Padma Bhushan awardee. He had worked with the pioneering Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier in Paris, and had also later assisted the renowned Estonian-American architect Louis Kahn, FRIBA in designing IIMA buildings. He had also founded and designed the renowned School of Architecture in 1966. His firm, the erstwhile M/s Stein, Doshi, & Bhalla, aided by M/s Kanvinde & Rai, was commissioned to design the campus of the newly established institute. The design was inspired by the 16th-century historic city of Fatehpur Sikri near Agra, and the 13th-century Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, along with the lush gardens of Bangalore, also known as the Garden City of India. The first director, N.S. Ramaswamy, had asked Doshi to create a campus to reflect the ethos of the Bangalore city - "green and alive [sic]".
Light and Environment were the cornerstones of the poly-nuclear design concept, a hybrid of Indian traditional architecture and principles of Team 10 modernists. The notable architectural elements include the multi-storeys-high passageways, trellises, open quadrangles with ample area for greenery, sunlight streaming in through the pergolas, semi-open corridors, geometrical roofs, rough texture finish, and Kota-stone flooring. An interplay of walls-n-openings, lights-n-shadows, and solids-n-voids changes the character of the main building during different times of the day, and during different seasons. The 54,000 sq-m original complex is built in combination of hand-chipped granite stonemasonry, and exposed concrete. The campus design began in 1977, and the construction of buildings was finished in 1983. The greening effort started later in 1991, and by the 2020s the campus had a green cover of 62 acres with around 30,000 trees, and 50+ ground re-charge wells. Subsequent newer buildings, like the 6,500 sq-m New Classroom Complex, were designed by Sanjay Mohe and P.N. Medappa of Mindspace Architects.
The IIMB campus design has won accolades over the years. The 'T' (Style Magazine) of The New York Times ranked IIMB campus 17th in their list of The 25 Most Significant Works of Post War Architecture. When Dezeen asked the thirteen leading Indian architecture firms to list their favourite building, the IIMB campus was the only building on the list to be chosen by two of them, calling it "the most influential piece of (Indian) modern architecture". The famous architectural historian and critic William J.R. Curtis labelled the IIMB campus as a "model" for educational institutions. The institutional project also finds mention in the citation of the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize for Doshi. The Architectural Digest India included IIMB in the list of 6 Educational Institutions in India with Exceptional Architecture. The famous GQ (India) magazine ranked it #2 in the list of 7 Most Beautiful Universities and Scenic Campuses.
The MDC is a separate building that offers specific facilities to fulfill the executive-education (Exec.Ed.) and corporate-oriented needs of the institute. It offers rooms and halls for seminars, conferences, presentations, interactive sessions, etc. It also has accommodation for corporate-executives, a dining hall with kitchen, a gym, and open space for events. Another New MDC (NMDC) block on the IIMB's second campus at Jigani was inaugurated by the Vice President of India on 1 March 2023.
The IIMB library is a four-level 55,000 sq-ft floor-area building abutting the academic block. Apart from direct access to the IIMB community, the library also provides membership-based services to individuals, professionals, organizations, corporations, and academic institutions, with preferential treatment to the institute's alumni.
It is well-stocked and timely updated with 163,000+ printed books, 9000+ journals (incl. e-journals), 20+ newspapers (in six languages), and 42,000+ issues of periodicals, predominantly in business and management areas. It also offers 3500+ eBooks, 1400+ audio-visual resources, web-based OPAC catalogue, remote-access facility, and Union Catalogue of the IIM Libraries Consortium.
The library provides access to information services like the EBSCO Business Service, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, Web of Science, Nexis Uni, Dow Jones Factiva, OECD iLibrary, Frost & Sullivan, Gartner, UNIDO, CMIE, WTO iLibrary, Euromonitor Passport, etc. It also has E-ShodhSindhu (eSS) Consortium's various subscriptions like J-Gate Plus (JCCC), Project Muse, Oxford Journals, ISID Database, NDLI eBooks/Archive, CaPD-PDS software (under ShodhShuddhi programme), etc.
The library also houses a Library Data Centre with specially set-up computer systems to fulfill the electronic-data needs of the institute. It provides access to 110+ e-Databases, and professional data services like the Bloomberg Terminal, Refinitiv Eikon, Thomson SDC-M&A, LSEG D&A Datastream, Statista, NielsenIQ, CEIC, etc.
IIM Bangalore is legally an educational society with elevated privileges of a body corporate as defined in the IIM Act, 2017. Furthermore, the IIM (Amendment) Act, 2023 accorded the status of Visitor (ex officio) to the President of India. The Board of Governors is the primary executive body of IIMB, while the Coordination Forum is a single body for all IIMs to communicate with the Indian government. IIMB is administered by the following structure:
The institute is operationally headed by the Director who acts as the chief executive officer. The Director is assisted by several officials as follows:
IIM Bangalore is an autonomous institute of higher learning in management. It does not officially need an affiliation to a university, and also does not require institute-level or course-level accreditation from government bodies like the NAAC or the NBA. Though, it has been internationally accredited by the EFMD EQUIS since 2010. The IIM Act (2017) made IIMB an Institute of National Importance, and empowered it to award degrees instead of just diplomas. Thereafter, in March 2018, IIM Bangalore became the first IIM to award an MBA degree to its passing-out students.
IIM Bangalore offers five degree-granting programmes in total, including the five-year full-time doctoral programme (called 'FPM') for a Ph.D. The three full-time MBA programmes are: the two-year flagship MBA (called 'PGP'), the one-year full-time EMBA/Executive MBA (EPGP), and the two-year specialised MBA in Business Analytics (PGPBA). The fifth is the part-time (weekend) MBA programme (PGPEM) for working professionals.
The full-time programme in Public Policy (PGPPM) leads to a PG Diploma, while the NSR Pre-Doc programme prepares students for a PhD, and grants a PG Certificate on completion. In 2024, an online undergraduate programme for BBA in Digital Business and Entrepreneurship (BBA DBE) was also launched.
In 2019, the institute signed an MoU with the MSDE (GoI) to train 'Fellows' for a PG Certificate in Public Policy and Management under the Phase-I (pilot) of the Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship programme as part of the World Bank funded SANKALP scheme. The 'Fellows' would go on to work with the District Administration in 69 districts across 6 states. In 2021, this program was scaled up in Phase-II to cover all Indian districts, and involved eight other IIMs with IIMB as the anchoring institute.
The institute offers globally-acclaimed Executive Education (Exec.Ed.) programmes for the needs of private corporations, government officials, entrepreneurs, and non-profit organisations. The programmes cover all areas of management for all levels of functionaries, whether early-in-career managers, or middle-management, or CXOs and senior leadership. The wide-range provides ample flexibility in:
IIMB was stuck with the 'PSU' image till the late 1980s, since it was initially steered as an indigenous Indian Licence Raj era effort to serve the government entities. This was in contrast to IIMC and IIMA which were set up in the early 1960s as full-fledged management institutes with active collaboration from the prestigious American B-Schools like MIT Sloan and HBS respectively. However, the aforementioned transformation efforts (starting 1985) improved the institute's standing, and by the 2000s, IIMB was competing for the top spot among B-Schools in India.
Worldwide, the Financial Times has ranked the MBA program at 47th in the Global MBA Ranking 2024. They also ranked the PGPM program 31st in the world in the Top 100 Masters in Management 2022 list. Quacquarelli Symonds ranked the IIMB 53rd in the world and 8th in Asia in the QS World University Rankings Global MBA Rankings 2025. The institute also was ranked 41st in the world and 8th in Asia in the QS Global Executive MBA Rankings 2024. French SMBG's Eduniversal ranked IIMB the best B-School in Central Asia region (incl. Indian subcontinent), and one of the only two with 5 Palms of Excellence. Business platform LinkedIn ranked IIMB 27th in its Top MBA Programs 2024 list. In Exec.Ed., the Financial Times ranks IIMB 59th in open category (AMPs, etc), and 48th in custom category.
In India, IIM Bangalore was ranked 2nd among management institutes by the NIRF in 2024. It was ranked third by Business Today magazine in their India's Best B-Schools yearly ranking in 2023. Outlook India placed it at 2nd position in their Outlook-ICARE India's Best Public B-School 2024 rankings. The Fortune India magazine ranked it third in their Best B-Schools overall ranking in 2023.
The founding vision of IIMB emphasised equal focus on imparting education, and conducting research in all functional areas of management and management studies. Therefore, many Centres of Excellence, official research Initiatives, and international research partnerships have been established. A Research and Publication (R&P) Committee is in-charge of operational affairs of all research at the institute.
There are eleven Centres of Excellence, six in management areas, and five in special areas. They are: Centre for Capital Markets and Risk Management (CCMRM), Centre for Corporate Governance and Sustainability (CCGS), Centre for Management Communication (CenComm), Supply Chain Management Centre (SCMC), Centre for Software and IT Management (CSITM), Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), Centre for Public Policy (CPP), Centre for Digital Public Goods (CDPG), Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL), Mizuho India-Japan Study Centre (MIJSC), and Israel Centre. Among these, the CenComm and CPP are centres with full-time faculty. The CCGS was among the first to be accredited as a National Centre of Excellence by the National Foundation for Corporate Governance (NFCG). A global centre of excellence for private equity and venture capital is also in the works, to be named after Hamilton E. "Tony" James.
The four contemporary research initiatives are: Behavioral Sciences Lab (BSL), Initiatives on Consumer Insights (ICI), Data Centre and Analytics Lab (DCAL), and Real Estate Research Initiative (RERI). International B-Schools partnering in research projects are: Ivey Western (CA), SMU (Singapore), UBC Sauder (CA), and Deakin University (AU). Collaborative research projects have been done with the likes of King's College London.
IIMB Management Review (IMR), launched in 1986, is the quarterly-published official journal of IIM Bangalore. It invites manuscripts online, and has a special emphasis on papers that focus on emerging economies. It is produced and hosted by Elsevier, and since 2022 the IMR is a 'Gold' Open Access journal available at ScienceDirect. The IMR has print ISSN 0970-3896, and online e-ISSN 2212-4446.
IMR is a peer-reviewed academic journal, and follows a double-blind review process. All submitted papers go through a preliminary review at the editorial desk, and appropriate ones are sent to an Associate Editor. On the latter's recommendation, the article may be rejected or assigned to two reviewers.
The IMR Doctoral Conference (IMRDC) is a premier academic conference for doctoral researchers in management science and associated disciplines. The first conference was held on 27 November 2009, and is now organised annually by the IMRDC Secretariat, which consists of members from the IMR (IIMB journal), and the institute's Research & Publication (R&P) Committee. It openly invites doctoral students in management research from across India and international colleges.
In 1999-00, Mr. Nadathur S. Raghavan, the Co-Founder and then Joint Managing Director of Infosys Technologies, in association with Global Internet Ventures, donated a generous amount of INR 130 million to aid the activities of the then Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies at IIMB. Thus, the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) had its inception in December 1999 to serve as the innovation and entrepreneurial hub of IIMB. It operates out of the 18,000 sq-ft NSR-GIV Centre building in the IIMB campus, and acts as a not-for-profit incubator for new business ventures as well as social causes. In 2017, NITI Aayog selected NSRCEL as a recipient of INR 100 million as scale-up and upgrade support over a period of two years.
NSRCEL organises its flagship entrepreneurial conference SummitUp every year. It was started in 2021, and aims to bring together government officials, industry representatives, academia, entrepreneurs, and other ecosystem members. Apart from general mentoring, NSRCEL caters to differing needs by offering special funds and customised programs depending on: stage of venture, product category, founder demographic, tech-focus, etc. In late 2023, a Campus Founders programme was started to directly assist the college-based start-ups across India. Many of these programs are/were in partnership with organisations like Maruti Suzuki, Capgemini, Alstom, Texas Instruments, Infineon Technologies, FICCI, Pernod Ricard (India), DailyRounds, SIDBI, Kotak Mahindra Bank, etc.
In January 2018, NSRCEL, aided by Goldman Sachs and DST (GoI), launched the Women Start-up Programme (WSP), India's first customised program for female entrepreneurs, after a successful pilot launched in November 2016. It included a five-week online MOOC, and two on-campus boot-camps for selected candidates in collaboration with partner institutes, followed by incubation and funding. In late 2018, Goldman Sachs built on WSP to expand their (since 2008) initiative 10,000 Women in India, and in 2023, the GS 10KW alumni were further offered the Finance For Growth program to help them raise capital. The National Commission for Women partnered with the India SME Forum and NSRCEL in 2021 to launch a fully-sponsored programme called the Empowering Women Through Entrepreneurship for giving management lessons to 5,000 budding women entrepreneurs. The Government of Karnataka collaborated with IIMB in 2023 to launch the Swavalambane programme to train rural women entrepreneurs under the National Rural Livelihood Mission funded by the World Bank.
IIMBx is the digital learning initiative of IIM Bangalore, launched with the aim to create a repository of digital courseware in management for international learners. Apart from offering online courses on third-party private and government platforms, IIMB also developed IIMBx's own in-house digital platform based on Open edX.
In 2014, IIMB became the first B-School in India to offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in partnership with edX – a not-for-profit online initiative of Harvard and MIT. MOOCs can be taken as individual courses, or as multi-course bundled programs, the latter leading to either the renowned MicroMasters certification or the IIMB Professional certification. Apart from edX and IIMBx, in 2017, the courses were also offered on the Government of India's SWAYAM platform where IIMB was appointed as the National Coordinator for management.
The institute's courses are also used to educate Indian civil servants via the iGOT-Karmayogi e-learning platform of the govt-owned non-profit SPV Karmayogi Bharat. The latter was established in 2022 for implementing a key pillar of the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB) - Mission Karmayogi of the DoP&T (GoI). In 2021, IIMBx also facilitated the IIMB partnership with NCW and India SME Forum to provide the six-weeks MOOC-based Do Your Venture program to five thousand aspiring women entrepreneurs.
The Career Development Services unit, called CDS, is responsible for providing career starting and advancement services to the students of IIMB. It aids in the making of resumes, and their subsequent verification. It coordinates with firms and organisations, and helps in conducting parts of hiring process for internships and jobs. The Placement Committee (PlaceCom) works under the CDS, the latter being headed by a Chairperson.
Apart from the academic curriculum, and seats on the aforementioned Academic Council and Placement Committee, the IIMB students can participate in many extra-curricular activities and events organised by several officially identified bodies. They have student-members, and are primarily run by students themselves with minimum interference from the institute. These student-bodies are divided into clubs, mini-clubs, local-chapters, and societies. All of them are ultimately governed by an apex body called the Students Affairs Council.
The most coveted clubs responsible for major events are: Forum for Industrial Interaction (FII), Cultural Committee (CulCom), Sports Council, and Entrepreneurship & Innovation Cell (EnI). There is also a local-club of Toastmasters International (called Focal), a local-chapter of SPIC MACAY society, and opportunities in ShARE/DWDG. The other student-bodies can be categories based on their primary function:
FII annually organises Vista, the international business summit hosted by IIM Bangalore. The three-day conclave brings together leaders from various fields of management and firms from multiple industries to a platform that lets students learn from professionals through events, competitions and case studies. Vista also incorporates guest speaker sessions, having previously invited Devi Shetty, Mukesh Ambani, Prahlad Kakkar, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Kamal Haasan, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Gurucharan Das, Santosh Hegde, Arun Shourie, Gul Panag, M J Akbar, Nandita Das, Narain Karthikeyan, and Shobhaa De.
The annual entrepreneurship summit Eximius is organized by EnI Cell of IIM Bangalore. It invites entrepreneurs to showcase their products and ventures to a willing audience, among other things. The event has hosted several eminent speakers including Shashi Tharoor, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Piyush Pandey, Mallika Sarabhai, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Kiran Bedi, Rashmi Bansal, Shaheen Mistri, Harish Hande, and D R Mehta.
IIMB's Women In Management (WIM) club annually organises the Women Leadership Summit. It seeks to build women-inclusive mind-set in students, entrepreneurs, and corporates. The event makes use of interactions with successful female personalities like Vinita Bali, Malavika Harita, Sneha Priya, Lakshmi Ishwar, Wilma Rodrigues, Nirmala Sankaran, Neeta Revankar, Dr. Gita Sen, Gauri Jayaram, Sanjaya Sharma, etc.
The annual cultural festival of IIM Bangalore is called Unmaad. The three-day event draws participants from across India. Unmaad features performances in music, drama, and dance, apart from events like quizzes, debates, street plays, professional concerts, fashion shows, etc. The event has hosted performances by prominent artistes including Farhan Akhtar, Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy, KK, Kailash Kher, Lucky Ali, Strings, Jethro Tull, Indian Ocean, etc.
The dusk-to-dawn event Yamini is a full-night Indian classical music festival held annually in Bangalore. It is organized by the 'Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music & Culture Amongst Youth' (SPIC MACAY), and is hosted at IIMB campus.
The Sports Council organises several intra-college & inter-college events, and other activities round the year. Sangharsh is the annual inter-IIM competitive sports event with participation from IIMA, IIMB, IIMC, and IIML. It is hosted by one of the four IIMs. Sangram is an annual inter-college sports competition among IIMs of southern India (Bangalore, Trichy, Vizag, and Kozhikode).
IIMB Alumni Association (IIMBAA) is the official association for all the alumni of IIM Bangalore. As of 2024, IIMBAA had ~15 chapters in India and around the world. An annual gathering event called Anusmaran (in Sanskrit, meaning 'reminiscence') is organised by all chapters for the alumni to meet their fellows, and relive their old memories. LSquare, named on the social-spot in the old hostel blocks, is the official alumni e-newsletter. Other events include 'The CEO Conclave', 'Leadership InsideOut', and many chapter-level offline or online networking opportunities.
IIMBue: The IIMBAA Leadership Conclave is the annual leadership summit organized by the alumni. It strives to bring thought-leaders, change-makers, and influencers of the time to interact with IIMB alumni. IIMBueX is the digital form of IIMBue launched in 2021.
In 2023, IIMBAA launched the IIMB Alumni Club based in the historic lush-green premises of the heritage luxury hotel Taj West End. The club is a 12,000 sq-ft of exclusive physical space in the landmark 20-acre 5-star hotel on the Race Course Road in the western part of the Bangalore Central Business District. It is operated by the IIMBAA Professional Development Society, and managed by a 9-member committee.
There are three kinds of memberships available - Life, Term, and Corporate, with the first being officially restricted to only the IIMB alumni. It offers a cafe, an open-air bar-n-restaurant, and on-demand banquet facilities for professional as well personal use of members.