Arindam Chaudhuri: Maverick management guru, whimsical or just a good publicist?

“If you say Arindam Chaudhuri is ugly and has a bad sense of dressing, I will not say anything. But if you say anything to harm my business, then I will sue you,” said Arindam Chaudhuri on a television show in 2013.

True to his word, Chaudhuri would sue any publication that expressed concerns about the legality of his management institute, Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM).

Just five years after IIPM campuses across the country were shut down after a series of legal battles over its credibility, Chaudhuri has been arrested by CGST South Delhi for an alleged Rs 23 crore undue claim of Central Value Added Tax (CENVAT) of service tax credit.

Industry watchers are of the view that Chaudhuri himself paved the way for his decline by setting unrealistic goals for his education business without taking regulatory approvals.

“After his campuses were shut down, he seems to have made several financial errors. Sooner or later, law will catch up,” recalls a Delhi-based journalist, who was among the several people served legal notices by Chaudhuri for portraying IIPM in a negative light.

His run-in with the law is not new. In March 2020, Chaudhuri was arrested and subsequently granted bail for allegedly submitting a forged medical certificate when the police asked him to join an investigation last year in connection with a 2016 case.

Known for his trademark ponytail and suited appearance, Chaudhuri was no less than a celebrity till 2014-15. He would be seen in parties, and hobnobbing with Bollywood stars. In fact, Shah Rukh Khan even hosted IIPM’s business quiz for a few years from 2009. But soon, a series of press articles questioning the validity of IIPM programmes led to many legal battles, ending with IIPM officially closing down its campuses across the country in 2015.

Early days

Arindam Chaudhuri was born on December 8, 1971. While not much is known about his childhood, IIPM was the brainchild of his father Malay Kisore Chaudhuri. IIPM was set up in 1973 in New Delhi and Arindam Chaudhuri himself completed his post-graduate diploma in planning and entrepreneurship from there.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Chaudhury did his schooling from Delhi Public School, RK Puram, and has an MA in Economics from the University of Madras.

In 1994, merely two years after completing his post-graduation from IIPM, he was appointed ‘honorary dean’ of the institute.

During his early years as the dean, IIPM had about 40,000 students across its 15-plus campuses, with 90 faculty members, including heavyweight visitors like Stephen Covey and Philip Kotler.

Chaudhuri had told this writer multiple times earlier that IIPM was not meant to be a traditional MBA institute and his vision was ‘Dare to think beyond the IIMs’. It was IIPM tagline in thousands of advertisements that appeared all over the print, electronic and outdoor media in 1995-2015.

He is said to have spent almost a whopping Rs 100 crore in a year in the early 2000s in advertising alone. This was despite his institute not being accredited by the University Grants Commission (UGC) or the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). UGC and AICTE accreditation is mandatory to issue degrees and diplomas, respectively.

He was also part of government consultative bodies. In 2004, he was appointed as a member (education and social sector) of the Consultative Committee for the now-defunct Planning Commission.

Run-in with media houses, tax complaints

The days of Chaudhuri’s pictures flashing on Page 3 of publications as part of celebrity parties were getting over by the mid-2000s. Allegations of tax evasion were also coming in.

In May 2007, the then minister of state for finance S S Palanimanickam, in an answer to a question in the Rajya Sabha raised by Dharam Pal Sabharwal, another member, about IIPM’s income-tax payment. Palanimanickam had said that IIPM had not paid income-tax during the assessment years 2005–06 and 2006–07, claiming exemption under Section 10(23C) (vi) of the Income-Tax Act, 1961.

Later, the ministry said that IIPM had paid no service tax in the preceding two years. Later, under a Right to Information Act (RTI) query on the institute, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had said that the ministry received a tax evasion complaint in respect of wrong claims of exemption under Section 10(23C) of the Income-Tax Act, 1961.

This Section provides certain exemptions to educational institutes.

Finally in 2009, the central government stated that there were no pending tax claims against IIPM and the case had been closed after due enquiry.

Around the same time, negative news started pouring in about Chaudhuri’s institute and how students were ‘allegedly being promised degrees’ when, in fact, IIPM was not authorised to issue any.

Peers in the industry say that Chaudhuri was completely different from the rest of the players in the education industry. He loved publicity for himself and for his institute, and would go to any extreme to ensure that there is no negative press.

Legal notices would be sent to publications which questioned IIPM’s functioning. The pattern was that a publication would be sent a lawsuit from a location where neither IIPM nor the publication was present.

In 2011, Chaudhuri filed a Rs 50-crore lawsuit against The Caravan  from Silchar in Assam for publishing a piece about the alleged discrepancies in the claims advertised about IIPM and what students actually received.

This was merely two years after a defamation case was filed by Chaudhuri against education/career portal Careers360 for its piece warning students against IIPM’s promise of awarding degrees from foreign universities.

Following this, a series of publications wrote about how IIPM claimed to have several foreign tie-ups and how students were promised degrees from abroad. Chaudhuri, on the other hand, consistently claimed that IIPM never ‘claimed’ to offer any degree or diploma.

Chaudhuri did not sit quiet. He continuously persisted and fought multiple legal cases against petitioners and publications which warned students against joining IIPM.

By 2011-12, the strength in IIPM courses started waning after students started expressing doubts about the veracity of the programmes.

A result of the constant warning online and offline against joining IIPM came in February 2013 when Chaudhuri was able to get 73 URLs blocked, including a web page of government body UGC (that warned students against IIPM) as well as a series of publications like Firstpost, The Caravan, news satire portal Faking News, Careers360, The Indian Express, Outlook and The Economic Times.

This interim court order from Gwalior was widely criticised because it was obtained ex-parte.

In the meantime, UGC and AICTE which regulates management institutes brought out multiple advisories stating that IIPM is not authorised to offer any degree/diploma.

Things move downhill

By early 2014, it was starting to become clear that IIPM would no longer be able to continue in the same form as before.

In September 2014, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed by B Mahesh Sarma, editor of Careers360 magazine, against IIPM for misleading students. In response, the Delhi High Court ordered Chaudhari to refrain from using words like BBA, MBA, management school, and business school in reference to IIPM.

The institute was also asked to ‘prominently’ display on its website that IIPM is not recognised by any statutory body/authority, and that students enrolling in this institute wouldn’t be getting either a diploma or degree.

A competitor in this space told Moneycontrol that this was like the first personal defeat for Chaudhuri and his education business. From this point, it became clear that IIPM would find it almost impossible to attract students to its campuses.

Chaudhuri, for his part, has continued to maintain that IIPM always issued only certifications for which recognition from UGC or AICTE is not mandatory, and that all students are aware of this, and, hence, there is no question of misleading them.

But he was soon losing track of the legal cases and multiple UGC/AICTE warnings.

The model IIPM 2.0 started splashing across newspaper advertisements from May 2015 onwards. But immediately after that, the Delhi Police registered a first information report against Chaudhuri and his father, Malay Kisor Chaudhuri, based on the UGC’s complaint that IIPM was ‘misleading, cheating and fooling’ students by charging a hefty fee and that it was not recognised by any regulatory body.

In July 2015, Chaudhuri said that IIPM will ‘re-boot’ and that it will enter into technical collaboration with other institutions rather than have its own campus.

“We do not want to get into this degree/diploma puzzle, nor do we want to get into the complex processes with AICTE and UGC on accreditation. This is the best way to reach out to many more," he had then said.

But 2015 was perhaps the last time that IIPM was seen as a full-fledged business school. From then on, campuses started to shut down.

The legal cases he had filed against individuals, including the long-drawn one with Maheshwari Peri, was also withdrawn in 2016. As early as 2005, Peri, who was then with Outlook magazine, had announced that the magazine wouldn’t rank IIPM in their business school surveys.

Peri also brought out a series of stories in Outlook in 2008 where he talked about the misleading facts of IIPM. He continued his stories against IIPM even after quitting Outlook to start Careers360. Chaudhari had filed a series of legal cases against Peri, and, at one point, there were 14 cases against Peri.

Once the courts turned against him and the regulators started cracking down on IIPM on multiple occasions, probably, Chaudhuri thought that the fight to retain IIPM was over. It has died a slow death since then.

The IIPM website still exists but it displays prominently that it is neither affiliated to any university nor has sought de jure recognition for its academic programmes from any statutory body. The multiple campuses have also shut down.

Other business interests

Even though IIPM campuses were shut down, Chaudhuri remained unfazed. This was possibly because he has other ventures, too, including a magazine called The Sunday Indian. This magazine lists Business and Economy and Human Factor as other group publications, though these domains no longer exist.

This online magazine website shows that Chaudhuri has a series of businesses under the ‘Planman’ banner. These include Planman Technologies, Planman Financial, Planman Consulting, Planman Realty and Planman Motion Pictures, among others.

Half of these websites no longer exist proving that these businesses could have likely been shut down.

Chaudhuri is also the editor-in-chief of IIPM Think Tank, which, its website claims, is an India-centric research body.

A former IIPM student who passed out in 2008 recalled how peers in her batch would be forced to join ‘Planman’ group of companies because they were often unable to find other job opportunities. However, she also admits that it was Chaudhuri’s popularity and the attractive ads that motivated her and several of her classmates to join the institute.

He also dabbed in the sports business by becoming the Delhi franchise owner of motorsports racing league i1 Super Series. But this motorsports league failed to take off.

Chaudhuri is also the author of Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch and Discover The Diamond In You. His website claims these books have sold over a million copies each. Apart from these books, Chaudhuri has authored books like Planning India, The Great Indian Dream and Thorns To Competition.

Donning multiple hats seems to come naturally to Chaudhuri, who is also a motivational speaker as per his personal website.

His sessions on management and leadership also didn't come cheap. His website said that Chaudhuri charges $50,000 for a speaking/consulting engagement of 90-180 minutes for an audience of 25 people.

Since is he is on judicial custody, Chaudhuri couldn't be contacted on his phone. A mail has been sent to him and Moneycontrol did not immediately receive any response.

Chaudhuri, the film-maker

After years of publicity, Chaudhuri interacted closely with film personalities, and, in 2004, decided to finance films himself.

The Sunny Deol, Manjari Fadnis-starrer Rok Sako To Rok Lo was his film as a Bollywood producer. Chaudhuri was also the film’s director and producer, which opened to average reviews.

Chaudhuri also produced movies like Sanjhbatir Rupkathara (2002) and Dosar in 2006. Planman Motion Pictures’ 2006 Bengali film Faltu, Amitabh Bachchan-starrer English film The Last Lear (2009) and 2010 Hindi film Do Dooni Char won national awards.

Rituparno Ghosh-directed Madhavan, and Konkana Sen Sharma starrer-Sunglass that was a bilingual (Bengali-Hindi) film of 2013 was the last film made under the Planman Motion Pictures banner.

Later years

Since 2015-16, Chaudhuri remained out of the limelight and IIPM ads were no longer visible.

He would only be seen once or twice a year on sponsored shows on television channels, discussing economic issues. That, too, went missing by the end of 2018 onwards.

Simultaneously, reports also came out in 2015-2016 about an alleged cheque bounce and subsequent alleged forged medical certificate by Chaudhuri. For this, he was arrested and, subsequently, let off.

Whether Arindam Chaudhuri is going to be punished in the on-going tax evasion case (where he is in a 14-day judicial custody) or not is another question. But the maverick genius and management guru image of him could be over.