kes was set up in 2004 by Bala Balachandran, J.L. Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Information Management at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, USA.

 

The first intake was for 127 students for its one-year programme and classes were held in a small rented building in Saidapet, a residential neighbourhood in Chennai city. Great Lakes developed a new greenfield campus at Manamai village near Mahabalipuram, a UNESCO Heritage Site 50 km south of Chennai, and shifted to this campus in 2009.

The first programme offered was a one-year full time programme called the Post-Graduate Program in Management (PGPM). At that point, few Indian Schools offered a one-year MBA programme since almost all leading business schools including the prestigious Indian Institute of Management traditionally offered a two-year programme.

The regulatory body for technical and management education in India, AICTE, also did not have a provision for approving one-year programmes. However, Great Lakes received approval for its PGPM from AICTE, the first instance of an approval for a one-year programme in the country. While the two-year programmes were categorized as a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management, the one-year programme was categorized as a Post-Graduate Certificate in Management.

Since 2012, Great Lakes has also started offering the traditional two-year PGDM programme.