Xlri - Xavier School Of Management

XLRI is the oldest business school in India, founded in 1949 in the steel city of Jamshedpur by the Jesuit priest Fr Quinn Enright, S.J. as the Xavier Labour Relations Institute. It is a private, autonomous institute run by the Society of Jesus, and that origin still shapes it: XLRI grants its own postgraduate diplomas rather than a university MBA, and its Human Resource Management programme grew directly out of the labour-relations work the institute was set up to do. It is not an IIM, and it does not want to be confused with one.

XLRI sits at rank 10 in the NIRF 2025 Management list with an overall score of 70.63, which places it inside the top ten management institutes the Ministry of Education ranks nationally. The institute is accredited by AACSB, AMBA and NBA, a combination of an American, a British and an Indian quality body that few Indian business schools hold together.

What sets XLRI apart in a crowded field is its Human Resource Management focus. Its HRM diploma is the most established human-resources management programme in the country, and HR leadership remains the school's signature output rather than a side offering.

The institute is fully residential and Jesuit-led, and it works from two campuses. The original campus is in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand; a second campus opened in 2020 at Jhajjar in the Delhi-NCR region, extending the same programmes closer to the capital.

XLRI's flagship offerings are two full-time, two-year residential diplomas: the PGDM in Business Management and the PGDM in Human Resource Management, which XLRI grants as its own postgraduate diplomas rather than as a university MBA. Alongside them it runs an 18-month full-time General Management diploma and a three-year evening diploma for working executives.

XLRI is a self-financed private institute, so its two-year diplomas are not subsidised the way a government institute's programme is, and it revises the tuition for each incoming batch. The exact figure for a given batch is published on the official admissions pages at xlri.ac.in, and that published fee is the one that binds; confirm it there before you plan your finances.

Admission to the two-year PGDM (BM) and PGDM (HRM) runs through XAT, the Xavier Aptitude Test that XLRI itself conducts every year as a national entrance exam. XAT is one of the most widely written management entrance tests in India, and XLRI is both its author and one of its users. Candidates who prefer a GMAT score can apply with it in the categories XLRI allows, but XAT is the main route.

The process does not end at the test. XLRI shortlists candidates on their XAT performance and then puts them through group discussion, a written test and a personal interview before it makes an offer, so a high percentile earns the interview call and XLRI's own selection panel then decides the seat. Application windows, exam dates and the shortlisting criteria are published fresh each cycle on the institute's admissions pages, and those dates are the ones that bind.

There is no single closing rank at XLRI, because it admits through XAT, a paper it both writes and marks itself. The bar it applies is a minimum XAT percentile, set separately for Business Management and for Human Resource Management and announced alongside each year's XAT result. Sectional percentile floors and category relaxations sit on top of the overall percentile, and those published percentiles are what decide who is called for the group discussion and interview.

XLRI reports its placement outcomes to NIRF batch by batch, and the record is close to full placement across all three of its most recent classes. It placed 351 of 356 students in 2021-22, 357 of 358 in 2022-23 and 382 of 384 in 2023-24, at median salaries of Rs 30,00,000, Rs 30,24,000 and Rs 28,00,000 respectively; the median eased to Rs 28,00,000 for the 2023-24 batch even as the class grew.

That median is a single institution-wide figure that blends the Business Management and Human Resource Management cohorts, so a finance-facing BM offer and an HR generalist role both sit inside it; a candidate should read it as the middle of a mixed class rather than a programme-specific number.

XLRI's sanctioned, approved intake for its two-year postgraduate programmes was 480 seats in the most recent year it reported to NIRF, covering the Business Management and Human Resource Management diplomas together; actual admissions run below that ceiling, and the total student strength on its rolls across both cohorts stood at 799.

As a private, autonomous Jesuit institute admitting through its own exam, XLRI does not run a government-style reserved-category seat matrix; its 480 sanctioned seats are shared between the Business Management and Human Resource Management diplomas, and the exact split for a given year is fixed in that year's admission bulletin.

The NIRF 2025 Management ranking places XLRI 10th nationally with a score of 70.63, one rung below Management Development Institute, Gurgaon at 71.96 and one above Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune at 67.90. On the five ranking parameters it scored 84.92 for Teaching, Learning and Resources, 50.83 for Research and Professional Practice, 94.94 for Graduation Outcomes, 62.63 for Outreach and Inclusivity, and 46.48 for Perception, so its graduation and teaching scores carry the total while research and perception hold it back.

XLRI also appears in international listings; it is placed in the 301 to 350 band of the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026.

XLRI is built around two academic pillars that match its flagship diplomas: a business-management stream covering finance, marketing, strategy, economics and operations, and a human-resource-management stream that is the institute's historic core. It also runs general-management and executive education, and a doctoral Fellow Programme in Management that supports research across these areas, with 60 full-time doctoral scholars on its rolls. The complete list of academic areas and research centres is kept on XLRI's academics pages.

The Jamshedpur campus is a self-contained residential campus with an academic library, computing facilities and student housing on site. On accessibility, XLRI told NIRF that lifts or ramps are present in more than 80% of its buildings, that walking aids and inter-building transport for students with disabilities are provided, and that specially designed toilets are available in the same share of buildings. A full, current description of hostels, sports and campus amenities is maintained on the official website.

Both flagship programmes are fully residential, so students live on campus for the two years. The current hostel and mess charge is published with the fee details on XLRI's admissions pages.

XLRI entered 85 faculty members in its NIRF 2025 submission, teaching across the business-management and human-resource areas. Its research bench is deeper than the teaching count alone suggests: the institute reported 60 full-time and 135 part-time doctoral scholars, a scale of research supervision that is unusual for a private management school and reflects XLRI's long involvement in management scholarship and labour studies.

XLRI's alumni are visible at the top of Indian and global business. Among the names its record traces are Leena Nair, the chief executive of Chanel; Sandeep Bakhshi, the managing director and chief executive of ICICI Bank; and Rakesh Kapoor, the former chief executive of Reckitt Benckiser. The concentration of senior HR and general-management leaders among its graduates is consistent with the school's focus on people and organisations.

The most significant recent development at XLRI is its expansion beyond a single campus: the same Jesuit society opened a second campus at Jhajjar in the Delhi-NCR region in 2020, giving the institute a presence near the capital for the first time in its history. The school also runs a large executive-education portfolio; it reported 41 management and executive development programmes with 2679 participants in 2023-24. XLRI posts its current notices and event listings on its own site.

Within the NIRF 2025 Management table, XLRI at 70.63 sits between Management Development Institute, Gurgaon at 71.96 and Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune at 67.90, within one to three points of each, so on the ranking numbers these three are closely bunched. What separates them is lineage rather than score: XLRI's Human Resource Management diploma predates the private-B-school boom that produced most of its neighbours, and it stays the school a recruiter turns to first for HR leadership rather than for a generalist management hire.

XLRI's main campus is in Jamshedpur, in Jharkhand, and its second campus is at Jhajjar in the Delhi-NCR region. The full postal address, phone numbers and programme-specific email contacts are listed on XLRI's contact page; the city and state are shown in the facts panel above.

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