Professor J. Philip, founder and chairman of Xavier Institute of Management & Entrepreneurship (XIME) passed away on Saturday (February 21, 2026). The institution is deeply saddened by the death of a prominent educator manager.
Prof. J. Philip was a very leading expert in the country in the field of management education. Starting as the youngest Dean of XLRI, Jamshedpur in the late sixties, he became a distinguished institution builder as the Founder Chairman of Xavier Institute of Management & Entrepreneurship (XIME) Bangalore for three decades till his last days, his career in the service of management education spanning more than sixty-five years, a unique record of Indian management education in history.
At XLRI, one of the pioneers of business education in the country, a young J. Philip got his spurs in the late 1960s as the designer of its ground-breaking postgraduate course in management. Equally praised was the exceptional ability he displayed as its Dean in maintaining the high standards of the institution at par with the best, not only in India but also overseas.
It was his stellar results at XLRI, combined with a respectable stint at Harvard, that led to his selection by the Government of India to head the staff of the Steel Bureau of India in Ranchi. J. Philip’s talents as a leader and innovator were on full display in the way he led this premier public sector educational institution and left a lasting impression.
Few management educators are given the opportunity to test their mettle in a challenging leadership position in corporate business, as it is central to their profession. J. Philip’s well-recognized success in teaching management as an academic discipline and using its tools to train public sector executives met the bill for being selected by Oberoi’s, one of the country’s leading hotel groups, as Vice President of Human Resource Management. His tenure there was notable for the transformative stimulus he brought to the vital human resources functions of the business.
The subsequent election of J. Philip as Director of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore in 1985 was undoubtedly a result of the government’s recognition of his outstanding qualities as a manager educator with proven experience in several functional areas of management both as an academic discipline and as an art and profession. And his tenure in this leadership position has been marked by the turnaround he has achieved for the institution, from a troubling bracket of disorder and organizational drift to restoring its original level of globally recognized excellence.
After his retirement from IIM Bangalore, J. Philip turned his visionary energies to establishing his own management institution. The Xavier Institute of Management & Entrepreneurship (XIME) in Bangalore was a sentimental fulfillment of the promise he had made to his daughter shortly before her death in a tragic accident to establish a model business school. Its establishment in 1991 with his own personal savings as a modest capital base and its growth and expansion into impressive additional campuses in Kochi and Chennai in the following years are testaments to his dubious but well-worn leadership and entrepreneurial skills.
His latest educational venture was the trend-setting Xavier International School, which he established in a rural area in his native Kerala during the past two years, even as he spent his last days planning a university consisting of three XIME campuses and adding one more in another South Indian state. In addition, his plans were to set up a youth development center in Alleppey, Kerala.
Apart from being part of the advancement of Indian management education over the years, J. Philip was the founder president of the Association of Indian Management Schools and the Association of BRICS Business Schools (ABBS). His efforts to promote India as home to the world’s largest annual cohorts of MBAs were reflected in these efforts as well as in the annual international conferences he organized until recently at his institute’s own expense to curate global themes for the benefit of the Indian management education community.
The highlight of his life and career was the distinction of Chevalier, which the Pope bestowed on him at the beginning of January this year in recognition of his outstanding services.
After the death of Prof. In J. Philip, India lost what The Hindu called the “doyen of Indian management education”.
(Author, CP Radhakrishnan is former Indian Ambassador to several countries and now Chairman, XIME, Kochi.)
Published – 21 Feb 2026 19:11 IST
