Laureation - Suborno Bose

Ladies and gentlemen, Suborno Bose is most worthy of receiving an honorary doctorate from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh as he has for many years contributed significantly to the development of education, business and entrepreneurial endeavour in India and indeed across the world. He has long held a vision of becoming India’s leading education provider in Hospitality and Business and of becoming the leading Hotel Group within his specific sector and he has set his sights on achieving this in the next five years. His overarching and defining philosophy has always been ‘dare to do’.

Suborno Bose was born in 1963 into a middle class Bengali family in Kolkata. He was educated at South Point School and then went on to study Commerce at St Xaviers College. At the same time he took a Chartered Accountancy course and therefore became a qualified chartered accountant at the young age of 23. Right from the outset Suborno Bose decided that he did not want to work for anyone other than himself and so he immediately founded his own accountancy firm called Bose Associates. A grand enough title but he admits it was merely a few rooms in his own house! At the same time he had the vision to identify a gap in the market and began giving classes in chartered accountancy to batches of students. He enjoyed teaching and especially the positive satisfaction he gained from seeing his students achieve top marks in their examinations. He therefore dared to do, although he had to work long hours, seven days a week to build up his business.

Within three years Suborno Bose had decided to take his teaching prowess to a higher level and in 1989 he launched a business management school called the Institute of Advanced Management. Once again he had dared to do rather than simply contemplating what could have been. Not content with this, however, he then went on to establish the International Institute of Hotel Management in 1994. IIHM is today regarded as one of the key leaders in the field of international hospitality management education in India. IIHM’s mission talks of producing ‘creative and resourceful professionals who are qualified to serve the hospitality industry within an educational environment that fosters innovation, enterprise and an enthusiasm for excellence’. The emphasis on innovation can be seen through IIHM being one of the first collegiate programmes in India to offer students the opportunity to graduate with a degree in collaboration with a UK university, namely Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.

Suborno Bose has always believed that the best way for students to learn is through a combination of applying theory to practice and to facilitate this he has enacted a strategy of opening hotels to work in conjunction with his hotel management schools. He is therefore also Founder of the Indismart Group which run Indismart Hotels and of which IIHM is an integral part.

In addition to this work, Suborno Bose is Managing Director of Zoom Enterprises Limited and Chairman and Chief Executive of the Asia Pacific International University, Global Limited, Scotland. Indeed he has described himself as a serial entrepreneur. He is regularly invited to speak at many prestigious national and international seminars and conferences, for example the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India and the World Travel and Tourism Council.

Suborno Bose has made a significant impact on the hospitality industry globally and is highly regarded by his peers. Throughout his life he has received a number of prestigious awards and invitations, for example the Udyog Rattan Award for Excellence from the Institute of Economic Studies in 1996. In 2007 he was invited to be the Technical Director of the National Convention of the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India and he was asked to be the Proctor on behalf of the American Hotel and Lodging Association. However, in many respects his greatest reward is in knowing that students who he has educated are working in the hospitality industry not just in India and across Asia but also in Dubai, in Australia and of course in Scotland and throughout the UK. As such these students are contributing to global economies.

As if all this business and educational activity did not consume every hour of his day, Suborno Bose still finds time to spend with his family. He is a voracious reader and lists his hobbies as writing, reading business literature and enjoying good food and wine. His philosophy of ‘daring to do’ has definitely served as an excellent guide for his overtly creative and successful working life and in many ways acts as a compelling and powerful role model for all of us, whether we are students or colleagues.

^ to top