TL;DR: There’s a difference between teaching AI and being transformed by AI. IIMs add modules. Jaipuria AI Labs rewired operations. Indians don’t pay for learning—they pay to reduce perceived hiring risk. The IIM logo is insurance, not education. The most expensive education in India is the one that teaches you nothing while convincing you it was worth it. And the market has no mechanism to tell you the difference.
In Part I, I laid out the institutional theater: IIM Bangalore rebranding 15 batches of analytics as “AI,” 75-80% pre-recorded content at ₹4 lakh price points, and faculty teaching transformation while optimizing for stability. Now: what the alternative looks like, why the market rewards this theater, and what it means for your actual AI readiness.
The AI-Native vs. AI-Adjacent Gap
There’s a meaningful difference between teaching AI and being transformed by AI.
IIMs—and most established institutions—do the former. They add GenAI modules to existing curricula. They update course names. They announce partnerships. They release strategic vision documents.
At Jaipuria AI Labs, we took a different bet. Not “MBA in AI”—which would have been the easy, announcements-friendly approach. Instead: AI embedded across teaching, assessment, career services, and yes, administration. The operating system, not just a course.
One approach generates press releases. The other requires rewiring how the institution actually functions.
Why didn’t we just launch an “MBA in AI” and capture the market moment? Because three years from now, the distinction between an “AI MBA” and a “regular MBA” will be meaningless. Either you’ve integrated AI into how business education works, or you’re teaching about AI as a theoretical subject while running your institution on spreadsheets and paper forms.
The question nobody asks IIM faculty teaching digital transformation: what does your own leave application process look like? How do your internal systems actually work? If the institutions teaching organizational AI adoption still run on manual processes themselves, what exactly qualifies them to advise on transformation?
This isn’t about one institution being superior to another. It’s about the difference between announcing change and embodying it.
The Recognition Deficit
There’s a pattern in how expertise gets valued. In competitive, credential-conscious environments, people who reach positions of authority often feel less secure in their own judgments. They seek objective-seeming criteria. Numbers. Credentials. Third-party validations. These convey an air of objectivity—the exclusion of subjective judgment.
Indian professionals, operating in one of the most competitive labor markets on earth, have learned this dynamic intimately. The right certification doesn’t just signal competence. It signals belonging. It reduces the perceived risk of hiring you. It gives decision-makers cover.
Indians don’t primarily pay for learning. They pay for the reduction of perceived hiring risk. The IIM logo is insurance, not education.
This explains why the same content with different branding gets different market reception. The content was never the point. The signal was.
And institutions have learned to optimize for signal production rather than capability development. Why invest in genuinely transformative pedagogy when rebranding existing programs captures the same premium? Why restructure operations around AI when announcing AI courses generates the same headlines?
The market rewards announcements. So announcements multiply.
What This Means For You
If you’re considering a ₹3-5 lakh executive AI program from a top Indian B-school, here’s the honest calculation:
You’re buying a credential that HR departments recognize. That has value. In a market where screening happens before interviews, where LinkedIn profiles get scanned in seconds, where the IIM badge opens certain doors—that recognition isn’t nothing.
But don’t confuse that with AI readiness. Don’t assume the curriculum will transform your capabilities. Don’t expect that faculty teaching from pre-recorded videos have insights you couldn’t find elsewhere.
The real AI learning is happening in different spaces. In companies actually implementing these systems. In communities sharing implementation war stories. In hands-on experimentation with tools that exist today, not theoretical frameworks about tools that might exist tomorrow.
Some of the most AI-capable professionals I know have zero formal AI credentials. They learned by building, failing, iterating. They developed judgment through application, not through watching videos about other people’s applications.
The certification path and the capability path have diverged. You can pursue both, but don’t mistake one for the other.
The Question Nobody Asked at Davos
At Davos this year, India’s IT Minister defended the country’s AI readiness to the IMF. India belongs in Tier 1, not Tier 2, he insisted.
He’s partially right. India has compute infrastructure, engineering talent, regulatory frameworks. The supply side looks impressive on paper.
But here’s the demand-side reality that executive education enrollment patterns reveal: Indians pay for credentials, not capabilities. They optimize for recognition, not readiness. They purchase signals, not skills.
The most expensive education in India is the one that teaches you nothing while convincing you it was worth it. And the market has no mechanism to tell you the difference.
IIM Bangalore ran the same program for 15 batches, changed the name, and called it transformation. The market accepted it. Enrollment continues. Nobody asked what actually changed.
That’s not Tier 1 readiness. That’s not even Tier 2.
It’s something the IMF doesn’t have a category for: a market where the buyers and sellers have agreed to pretend, where credentials substitute for competence, where press releases substitute for change.
The institutions will keep announcing. The market will keep enrolling. And somewhere in between, the actual AI transformation—the one that requires building, breaking, learning, risking—will happen to people who opted out of the certification theater entirely.
Those are the people who’ll be genuinely ready.
The question is: which group are you in?
Sources: IIM Bangalore EEP announcement on BAAI Batch 16, IIM executive education fee structures, program reviews and industry analyses, Jaipuria AI Labs positioning
