G.d. Goenka University

G.D. Goenka University is ranked by NIRF for one discipline only, pharmacy, where it placed 90th in 2025. Its Department of Pharmacy on Sohna Road runs a PCI-approved B.Pharm with 100 seats and three 15-seat M.Pharm branches. Three quarters of those B.Pharm seats are allotted by Haryana's state counselling on an entrance test the university does not set, and the university's own website and the state brochure print different fees for the same degree.

The university was written into the schedule of the Haryana Private Universities Act, 2006 by an amending Act that the state's Law and Legislative Department notified on 3rd May, 2013, where it appears at serial 12 as "G.D. Goenka University, Sohna Road, Gurgaon". The university's own recognitions page cites that 2006 Act, and its about page cites the amending Act 08 of 2013. A University Grants Commission letter from May 2017 confirms that it was established by an Act of the Haryana legislature and may award degrees from its main campus, and that it is not authorized to open study centre/ off campus centre beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the State.

The campus sits inside GD Goenka Education City, which the university describes as spread over 20 acres in the foothills of the Aravalli Range on Sohna Gurgaon Road, 29 kms from Delhi's International Airport, alongside the group's schools. Its AISHE code is U-0720, printed on the certificate for its 2023-2024 survey return.

Pharmacy is taught by the Department of Pharmacy in the School of Healthcare and Allied Sciences (SoHAS). Older documents use the school's previous name: the Pharmacy Council of India's approval letter is still addressed to the "Deptt Of Pharmacy School Of Medical And Allied Sciences", and the Haryana counselling brochure uses the old name too.

The surname is shared by other colleges that have nothing to do with this campus: Goenka College of Pharmacy in Sikar, Goenka College of Commerce in Kolkata and Goenka Research Institute of Dental Sciences are separate institutions, so check the name on any approval letter or fee receipt.

The department awards two pharmacy degrees, the four-year B.Pharm and the two-year M.Pharm, and it offers no D.Pharm or Pharm.D. The Pharmacy Council of India's decision letter dated 10 Mar 2026 approves B.Pharm at 100 and M.Pharm in Pharmacology, Pharmacognosy and Pharmaceutics at 15 each for 2026-2027, and the department's programme list names the same four courses.

What the B.Pharm Costs Over Four Years

The B.Pharm course page puts the whole degree at 8.50 Lakhs, charged as Rs 2,35,000 in the first year and Rs 2,05,000 in each of the next three. Semester by semester, that is Rs 1,32,500 for the first semester and Rs 1,02,500 for each of the remaining seven. The heavier first year is the annual fee plus the one-time admission and security fees listed on the fee structure page.

Haryana's counselling brochure prints a lower figure for the same department. Its table of fees for private university pharmacy departments lists the Deparment of Pharmacy School of Medical & Allied Sciences, GD Goenka University, Sohna, Gurugram at a total fee of 150000, and it warns that these figures are "just tentative and subject to confirmation of the State Fee Committee/ University". The same page records that the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee's 2021 fee order for private universities, 75000 tuition plus 11250 development fund, was put in abeyance by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

M.Pharm Fees by Branch

Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology are priced the same, at 4.15 Lakhs for the course, Rs 2,25,000 in the first year and Rs 1,90,000 in the second. Pharmacognosy costs noticeably less, 2.80 Lakhs in total, Rs 1,55,000 and then Rs 1,25,000.

What the B.Pharm Syllabus Adds

The B.Pharm course page publishes a curriculum that goes beyond pharmaceutics, chemistry, pharmacology and pharmacognosy into computing. The first semester opens with Basics of Python Programming for Pharmaceutical Sciences, the third brings Introduction to Machine Learning in Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the sixth carries AI applications in Pharmaceutical Sciences, according to the semester-wise course list. Mandatory internships sit in the fourth and sixth semesters, and research projects run through the seventh and eighth, with electives such as medical devices, pharmaceutical automation and biosimilars.

The route into a B.Pharm seat here depends on which slice of the intake you are competing for, and the M.Pharm is decided by the university alone.

B.Pharm Through HSTES Counselling

The Haryana State Technical Education Society (HSTES) brochure for 2026-27 lists GD Goenka's pharmacy department among the private university departments taking part in state counselling. It makes OCET-2026 rank the basis for counselling seats in every PCI-approved B.Pharm department in the state, private universities included, citing the inter-se rank of the Online Common Entrance Test (OCET)-2026 conducted by the HSTES. For a private university, 75% of sanctioned intake shall be filled through HSTES in two online counselling rounds under the state's reservation policy. The university fills the other 25% of sanctioned intake (management quota) itself, on marks in the qualifying examination.

The university's own B.Pharm page agrees that the process prescribed by HSTES and the Pharmacy Council of India is strictly followed for admission in B. Pharmacy programs, and it sends applicants to hstes.org.in for centralised counselling.

The 2026 cycle is behind schedule. The key-dates sheet set OCET-2026 for 06.07.2026 to 11.07.2026, with ranks displayed on 16.07.2026, but HSTES then postponed the B.Pharm counselling due to the revision of Academic Calendar by the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India. The same key-dates sheet gives 15.10.2026 for the start of the session and 30.10.2026 as the final cut-off date of all admissions, both marked as per PCI.

B.Pharm Eligibility and Lateral Entry

The university asks for 10+2 with English and Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and/or Biology, and an age of 17 years on or before 31 December of the admission year. D.Pharm holders can join the second year by lateral entry, provided they pass the first-year B.Pharm subjects that the diploma did not cover.

Does the University Hold Its Own Entrance Test?

The university's pages answer this question in three different ways. The admissions FAQ says GD Goenka University does not conduct its own entrance exam. The scholarship page lists the GDGUA (GD Goenka National Entrance & Scholarship Test) as one basis for awards. And the three-step admission process printed on the B.Pharm and M.Pharm Pharmaceutics pages tells applicants to "Appear for Entrance test and interview". For the three quarters of B.Pharm seats that go through HSTES, OCET-2026 is the test that counts; confirm with the admissions office which of the others, if any, applies to a management-quota or M.Pharm application.

M.Pharm Admission

M.Pharm seats are filled by the university, not by state counselling. The Pharmaceutics page asks for a B.Pharm from a PCI-approved institution with not less than 55 % of the maximum marks (aggregate of 4 years of B. Pharm.), and a migration certificate, and it cancels the seat of any student not on a State Pharmacy Council register within a month of joining. The Pharmacology page sets 55% marks in B.Pharmacy (50% for reserved categories as per UGC norms), shortlists on academic performance and/or an entrance examination where applicable, and may add a personal interview. None of the three M.Pharm pages makes a GPAT score compulsory. The application fee is ₹1,003 (non-refundable).

The HSTES 2026-27 brochure prints no cut-off, but the state's admissions portal does keep one for this department. Choose B.Pharmacy and then GD Goenka's pharmacy department in its Last Year's Opening and Closing Rank Cut-offs tool and it shows allotments in both counselling rounds. The opening and closing OCET ranks sit only in the All India Category columns, where the second round closed later than the first. Every Haryana category column, general and reserved, is blank for both rounds, so read that table rather than assuming a state-quota rank exists. The 2026 counselling that would refresh it had not started when HSTES issued its postponement notice.

Two things narrow the guesswork. After the second HSTES round, leftover seats are filled at institute level firstly on the basis of rank of OCET-2026 and thereafter on the basis of Inter-se-Merit of percentage of aggregate marks of qualifying examination, so a candidate without a strong rank can still be admitted if seats remain. And the department has admitted fewer than 100 first-year B.Pharm students in every year its returns cover: 97 in 2018-19, 63 in 2019-20, 70 in 2020-21 and 90 in 2021-22.

No GPAT or merit cut-off is published for the M.Pharm. On the same returns, the M.Pharm admitted 27 students against 45 seats in 2021-22 and 43 in 2022-23, and 36 in 2023-24.

The most reliable placement figures for the pharmacy department are the ones it filed for its NIRF returns, graduating batch by batch. They count students placed and a median salary, not an average or a highest package.

The latest batch placed the largest share, 69 of 87 in 2024-25 at a median of 400000, the highest median the degree has filed. Three batches earlier, 35 of 99 graduates were placed and 15 went on to higher studies, leaving about half of the batch outside both columns.

The M.Pharm side places a larger share, and its median has held at 450000 for two batches. The first M.Pharm batch graduated in 2022-23; the return for 2021-22 shows no postgraduate graduates at all.

Which Employers Came for Pharmacy Students

The corporate resource centre posts a school-by-school spreadsheet of every job description it floated, and the one for 2024-25 on its past placement records page shows who approached pharmacy students. Its SoHAS rows for B.Pharm and M.Pharm include Medanta hiring assistant pharmacists, Medtronic taking regulatory affairs interns and apprentices, Lupin and Abbott recruiting for marketing, Cadila Pharmaceuticals and Glenmark for field sales, Genedrift for regulatory affairs trainees, Stanford Laboratories for quality roles, and Tata 1mg. A drive on that sheet records that a company invited applications, not how many students it hired. Many of the roles are in sales, marketing and patient support rather than manufacturing or research.

Women applicants competing for GD Goenka's counselling seats get a 25% horizontal reservation in all categories of the state quota, though not on the waiver and EWS seats that sit above the 100. Tuition Fee Waiver seats are open only where family income does not exceed Rs.8.00 lakh and only in courses where at least 30% of approved intake has been filled. The state's list of participating private university departments shows a sanctioned intake of 100 for GD Goenka's pharmacy department in 2025-26, the same as the council's figure for 2026-27.

The class a student actually joins has been smaller than the seat count. The 2026 ranking return counts 337 students across the four B.Pharm years and 76 across the two M.Pharm years.

Pharmacy is the one NIRF list with G.D. Goenka University on it, at 90th with a score of 42.65 in India Rankings 2025. That is a climb into the numbered list: in the two editions before, the university sat in the unnumbered Rank-band: 101-125 for 2024 and the same 101-125 band for 2023.

The department scored 0.00 on perception, the parameter NIRF builds from its peer and employer survey, so the rank was earned entirely on the other four. Outreach and inclusivity is its strongest parameter. That fits a student body that reached well beyond Haryana: the 2025 return counted 142 B.Pharm students from within the state, 190 from outside it and 49 from outside the country, and the 2026 submission raises the overseas figure to 85 of the 337 B.Pharm students, while students from other Indian states fall to 120.

Research is its weakest parameter after perception. The 2026 submission shows 3 sponsored projects bringing in 5312000 in 2024-25, none in 2023-24 and 6 worth 5713707 in 2022-23, alongside one consultancy project worth 6500000 and 27 patents published in calendar year 2024. The university has uploaded that 2026 return, but the 2026 pharmacy results have not been published on nirfindia.org, so 90th in 2025 is the current rank.

The university's awards page also lists commercial and survey rankings such as the Education World higher education rankings and the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. None of those is specific to pharmacy, and none is a government ranking.

Pharmacy is one department within SoHAS, whose fee schedule also carries physiotherapy, nursing, optometry, radiology and imaging, medical laboratory sciences, cardiovascular technology, clinical embryology and public health programmes, according to the fee structure page. Its three M.Pharm branches, Pharmaceutics, Pharmacology and Pharmacognosy, are the only pharmacy master's specialisations on the 2026-27 approval; there is no pharmaceutical chemistry or pharmacy practice branch.

The department's research page names its focus areas as drug development, nano medicine, oncology, metabolic disorders, pain and inflammation and polymer sciences, with 32 PhD scholars. That scholar count is lower than the 3 full-time and 40 part-time doctoral students in the NIRF return, so the web figure is likely out of date.

The department lists three research laboratories: a Nanomedicine Lab, a Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Biopolymer Formulations Lab, and an Animal House Facility and Pharmacology Lab, plus a Central Instrumentation Lab with HPLC and spectrophotometers. The pharmacology lab's equipment includes organ baths, Rotarod, Y Maze, and Morris Water Maze for behavioural studies, and the department's about page adds a dissolution apparatus, a herbal garden and a pharmacognosy unit.

Spending on laboratory equipment jumped in the latest year the department reported: 4312075 in 2024-25, against 1849500 in 2023-24. On access, the Sohna Road buildings are self-reported with "Yes, more than 80% of the buildings" against the questions on ramps, lifts and specially designed toilets, and wheelchairs are listed as provided.

Outside the labs, students go on industrial and institutional visits. The university's news pages record trips to Moniques Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd., Faridabad on 19 February 2026, Silverline Laboratories in Delhi and the National Dope Testing Laboratory.

Hostels are run for the whole university, not for the pharmacy department, and the rent is high compared with the tuition. The published annual charges run from ₹1,95,000 for a bunk bed to ₹4,00,000 for premium single occupancy, payable in two instalments.

Every room type except the bunk bed costs more per year than the B.Pharm's annual fee of ₹2,05,000. The page says the charge covers air-conditioned rooms, meals, laundry, Wi-Fi and fitness club membership. Day scholars can use university buses, priced at ₹66,000 a year from Gurugram and ₹80,000 from Delhi or Faridabad.

The department reported 38 faculty members for India Rankings 2025. The 2026 return goes further and lists every teacher by name, and 14 of the 25 assistant professors on it hold an M.Pharm rather than a doctorate. Prof. Rahul Singh heads the department; the same list records him joining on 22-07-2024 with 288 months of experience, while SoHAS dean Saahil Arora brings 384 months.

Most of the roster is recent. Professor Naresh Sharma has been there since 25-08-2014, but 30 of the 40 entries joined in 2021 or later, and two are recorded as leaving on 31-07-2025. The department's own faculty listing does not match the NIRF roster name for name, so ask who teaches your branch before choosing an M.Pharm specialisation.

Doctoral work is mostly part-time: the department's doctoral register for 2024-25 has 3 full-time and 40 part-time scholars, and 9 part-time doctorates were awarded that year. The department's research page lists patent filings naming its staff, including an antidepressant compound from the stem of Jasminum mesnyi, application 202311062377 A, and a filing by Dr Vinod Kumar for equipment used in microwave-assisted synthesis of chemical compounds.

No named pharmacy graduates are published on the department's about or placements pages, which describe faculty awards and recruiters instead, so no alumni are listed for GD Goenka's B.Pharm or M.Pharm.

The department page's news feed is shared across SoHAS, so pharmacy items sit between nursing and physiotherapy events. Recent pharmacy-relevant entries on the Department of Pharmacy page include the educational visit to Silverline Laboratories, Delhi on 27 Feb, 2026 and the visit report from the National Dope Testing Laboratory dated 07 Apr, 2026. For admissions news, the item that matters most in 2026 sits on the state's site rather than the university's: HSTES's notice postponing B.Pharm counselling, with a revised schedule still to come.

Gurugram has several private university pharmacy departments in the same HSTES counselling, and two of them entered the statute book in the same amendment as this university. The 2013 amending Act that added G.D. Goenka University at serial 12 also added K.R. Mangalam University, Sohna Road, Gurgaon at serial 13 and Shree Guru Gobind Singh Tricentenary University in District Gurgaon at serial 10.

Within that group, Amity sits higher on the national table while GD Goenka at 90 and SGT at 100 sit near the foot of it, both with a perception score of zero. The fee column is the state's tentative listing, and GD Goenka's own website asks for more, so compare like with like: the university-published fee at each campus, or the HSTES figure at each.

The PCI letter places the department in Sohna, and HSTES lists it as Sohna, Gurugram; the campus is on the Gurugram-Sohna road rather than in Gurugram city. In the HSTES choice list, look for it under the department name the brochure uses, School of Medical & Allied Sciences.

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