Ramanathan Hariharan, senior director, CEE, ISB, and S. Durgaprasad, director and CEO, Bahwan CyberTek Group (BCT), signed the MoU at the ISB campus here.

“There is tremendous focus from various governments in the Middle East to look beyond oil. They are looking at creating a knowledge economy. ISB being a leader in executive education, their knowledge and their experience can come handy to build the community in that part of the world,” Durgaprasad told IANS.

Added Hariharan: “They are trying to create a knowledge-driven economy which means exposing citizens to new business models, new management practices.”

BCT, an associate of the Suhail Bahwan Group, one of Oman’s foremost business houses, will focus on industry verticals like banking, financial services, government, energy utility industry and infrastructure. The executive education programmes will cater to both the citizens of Oman and expatriates.

To start with, the programme will be delivered in Oman from September this year for 50 to 100 people in the first year. BCT plans to expand this to the UAE, Qatar, Egypt and other countries in the region.

The MoU with Bahwan comes a few weeks after the ISB signed a similar agreement with the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi.

ISB will focus on the design and delivery of the programmes, which will be conducted by ISB’s globally renowned faculty.

The CEE, which offers open and custom designed programmes, is also looking at creating case studies relevant to the region.

The programmes will be delivered in Oman. “We are also looking at options where the students will be exposed to practices not just in Oman but growing economies like India. So one leg of the programmes will be in Oman and another possibly in India. Third leg could be in US, Europe or China,” he said.

BCT, an information technology, products and services company, hopes the spin-off would be multi-fold.

The $ 110 million company, which operates in four continents and deliver solutions in 20 countries, expects the ISB programmes would meet the internal needs of the 1,500-member organization.

“We will definitely lean on their knowledge. If we are able to contribute to the knowledge economy we stand at a strategic position of being respected. It will have its impact. The outlook of people will change towards a more modern management structure,” said Durgaprasad.

BCT, which has its centre of excellence in Chennai, has India as a hub to create knowledge for its products. It also had offices in US, Oman, UAE, Egypt, Singapore and Brunei.

BCT, which also works with government of Oman, provides IT, ITes training to create jobs for people in Oman. It also deliver payment solution for citizen services in Oman, Dubai and Egypt.

“We have also got contract for spreading digital literacy. We have trained 13,000 citizens and will be training 30,000 by the end of the programme,” he said.