OnlineMBA.instituteyour online MBA institute

Institutional profile · Lucknow · since 1997

The Indian Institute of Commerce and Trade, on the record

Most claims about an institute can be settled by asking three questions: what it legally is, what it awards under its own name, and whose other names appear on its paperwork. This page answers those three questions for IICT — and stops there.

Running since
1997
Legal form
Registered society, Societies Registration Act, 1860
Seat
Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
Standing
Autonomous institute
Awards in its own name
Its own diplomas — not degrees
University degree route
Via Subharti University (SVSU), Meerut

01 · What it legally is

A society under the 1860 Act, and what that does and does not permit

IICT has been running since 1997 and is registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 — the statute under which a large share of India’s older non-profit institutions are constituted. A society of this kind is autonomous: it governs itself, sets its own curriculum, examines its own students, and issues awards under its own name. Nothing about that form is exotic, and nothing about it is a red flag. It is simply a different legal instrument from a university charter.

What autonomy is not is a licence to award degrees. In India a degree is a university’s instrument — open, state, central, private or deemed. An autonomous institute that is honest about its position awards diplomas, says so in plain language, and lets the award stand on the institute’s own name. That is the position IICT takes, and this page holds it to the same standard the main site applies to all 337 institutions on its register.

The precedent that keeps this from being a dismissal. The Indian Institutes of Management operated as registered societies until 2018, when the IIM Act took hold; their graduates in all those years carried the PGDM — postgraduate in level, never a degree. Nobody treated it as second-rate. The instrument is a legal category; the quality question is separate, and has to be judged institution by institution.

02 · What it awards

Its own diplomas, described as exactly that

IICT’s own awards are diplomas issued under its own name. They are not UGC degrees and they sit outside UGC purview — and IICT does not claim otherwise, which is worth noting in a market where plenty of providers muddy precisely this point. The diploma’s value rests on two things only: the curriculum behind it, and the institute’s name on it.

The practical test is the one this network applies everywhere. If a written rule in your path names a degree — government recruitment, PhD admission, an HR policy that spells the word out — an institute diploma does not satisfy it, whoever the institute is. If no rulebook is being consulted, then what you are weighing is teaching, price and reputation, and the degree/diploma label stops doing any work. How to run that test on any programme is written up on the main site.

03 · The two universities on the letterhead

Subharti and Amity: two names, two entirely different meanings

Two university names appear alongside IICT’s, and they mean very different things. Keeping them straight is most of what an institutional profile is for.

Distance learning centre — produces a degree

Swami Vivekanand Subharti University (SVSU), Meerut

Accredited NAAC A. In distance mode SVSU offers an MBA degree with UGC entitlement, with IICT occupying the centre seat. The division of labour is exact: to IICT, the teaching, mentoring and study support; to the university, the award, the entitlement, the degree.

The programme takes the dual-specialisation shape — fields drawn from Strategic Management, Human Resource Management, Finance, Marketing and Operations Management — at ₹65,000 for the entire two years.

What a student receivesA university degree, awarded by SVSU. IICT’s name is on the teaching; the university’s name is on the parchment. Two separate bodies, two separate roles.
Academic MoU — produces no qualification

Amity University

An academic MoU sits on IICT’s books with Amity University. It is a working relationship between two institutions, and only that.

No award any student receives arises from it, and no IICT award should be read as an Amity one. Where a prospectus-writer would be tempted to inflate a memorandum into something a student receives, the accurate sentence is one line long — and this is it.

What a student receivesNothing issued by Amity. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling, not describing.

04 · The record you can check

Where its alumni have gone — and the one name in a statutory filing

The employer base recorded for IICT alumni is Indian corporate and public sector:

ICICIRelianceIndian ArmyTataHDFC

One data point rises above the anecdotal because it sits in statutory filings rather than marketing copy. Open any PNB Housing Finance annual report from FY22-23 through FY24-25: the director pages there credit Girish Kousgi — who now heads IIFL Home Finance as MD & CEO, having earlier held that office at PNB Housing Finance — with a Business Administration diploma at executive master’s level, earned at IICT.

Read it for what it is. One checkable fact: the diploma sits without embarrassment in a board-level career, in a document a company files by law. It is not evidence of typical outcomes — one CEO proves what one CEO proves, and nothing more.

05 · The sister institute

IICT is one of a pair

A year after IICT, in 1998, the Indian Institute of Pharmaceutical Marketing (IIPM) was established in the same city under the same statute — another autonomous Lucknow society, this one focused on pharmaceutical and healthcare management. (No connection exists to the now-collapsed “Planning and Management” outfit that once shared the acronym — a different entity entirely.)

The two institutes together run this site’s own online MBA programme, and the same rule governs both without exception: each institute awards its own diplomas; wherever a university degree is involved, the degree comes from the partner university, never from the institute. If you hold every provider in this market to that one sentence, most of the confusion in it disappears.

06 · Asked and answered

The five questions people bring to this page

Is IICT a university?
No — nor does it present itself as one. It is an autonomous institute teaching in Lucknow since 1997, its legal form a society registered under the 1860 Act. Diplomas go out under the institute’s own name. Wherever a university degree enters the picture, a partner university is the body granting it, never IICT.
Is an IICT diploma a degree?
Not a degree, no: what it is, is an autonomous institute award — no UGC degree status, no place in UGC purview, and the institute is candid about both. The IIMs make the useful precedent: society-registered until the IIM Act took hold in 2018, conferring the PGDM diploma all the while, and nobody called that second-rate. But where a written rule names a degree, a diploma does not satisfy it, whoever issues it.
What exactly is IICT’s role with Subharti University?
Swami Vivekanand Subharti University of Meerut — a NAAC A university — has IICT in the centre seat: teaching, mentoring and support are the institute’s share, while degree and UGC entitlement remain the university’s. What the student takes away is SVSU’s UGC-entitled dual-specialisation MBA degree, priced at ₹65,000 for the whole two years.
What does the Amity University MoU mean for students?
Nothing, in credential terms. The MoU on IICT’s books with Amity University is cooperation between the two organisations; no award any student receives arises from it, and no IICT award should be read as an Amity one.
How do I verify any of this myself?
Every load-bearing claim here is checkable. A society under the 1860 Act is a public legal form. A university’s entitlement to award distance degrees is checkable against the UGC-DEB records for your mode and your year — entitlement lapses, so check the year that matters to you. The one named alumni record can be pulled from the annual reports PNB Housing Finance files by statute. And for anything a provider tells you, ask for it in writing before you pay.
The IICT / IIPM programme → Who can award an online MBA → Back to the main site →