Bollywood ‘excels’ at Harvard

Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s Excel Entertainment has created its own niche in Bollywood with a variety of new-age films.

Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s Excel Entertainment has created its own niche in Bollywood with a variety of new-age films. With their latest move, the production firm has achieved special status in the industry. The prestigious Harvard Business School (HBS) has chosen the company as the subject of a case study, which will be part of their annual curriculum for the year 2012-13.

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After Sidhwani delivered a keynote lecture on new age cinema at HBS in March, the school’s representatives got an insight into the workings of a Bollywood film. They decided to take it further with this study. Studies like these are a description of a management situation and are used for class discussions in a variety of educational programs. Harvard was apparently keen to explore a production house that had experimented with new-age cinema (in Bollywood) and also had a successful track record.

An insider reveals, “Mukti Khaire, an associate professor at the HBS, flew down from Boston for a week and was the faculty lead on the case. She worked closely with Namrata Arora, the associate director of Harvard University South Asia Initiative during the case-writing process.” As part of their research, they interviewed Ritesh and Farhan along with other members of the Excel team.

“The case study will be taught to second year MBA students at HBS in January/February 2013.

This is considered highly prestigious. After being taught at HBS, studies like these are picked by professors from universities worldwide,” adds the insider. Generally, HBS case studies are also put on the Harvard Business Publishing website for professors to purchase and teach in their respective universities.

When contacted, Sidhwani confirmed the news without getting into further details.