Economics education in India has not kept pace with developments in the workplace. There is a dearth of post-graduate programs which marry strong theoretical foundations with applied skills necessary for a rapidly globalizing economy. In particular, the Global Financial Crisis and the rise of Big Data have generated a need for a more practical education where students of economics and finance develop a new toolkit to analyze and address real-world problems. The Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics has been established as an institution of excellence to provide graduate students with the academic rigor and applied skills to meet the needs of a dynamic and globalized workplace. The programs have substantial input and participation by top-ranking corporates to improve the employability of students.

The Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics (MDAE) has been established in Mumbai to cater to the growing demand for practitioner or “market” economists in industry, policy think tanks and government. As the Indian economy grows and further integrates with the rest of the world, this demand will only multiply. MDAE focusses on “liberating minds” of the students so that they can take on a multitude of challenges. It does so by focussing not just on theoretical rigour but also on practical intuition and by adopting an interdisciplinary nature of learning. This way it teaches students “How to think?” instead of “What to think?” The Academy has been initiated by some of India’s leading economists and financial professionals that sit on our Academic and Advisory boards, bringing in rich corporate experience and wisdom to all our programs. Now in it’s third academic year, MDAE has been attracting some of India’s leading undergraduate students as well as young working professionals for its programs. Furthermore, because we are training students for the real world, our program pays a great deal of attention to developing each student in a holistic way – intellectually as well as interpersonally, which is made possible due to our low student/faculty ratio. MDAE largely operates in 3 spaces – Full time programs, Part-time Programs and well as short term trainings for students/corporates