A Look Back at IIPM and Stoa School, and What Their Closures Actually Involved

Two Indian institutions that once described themselves as an alternative to the conventional MBA have since shut down. One closed after a High Court order and a police complaint. The other closed on its own initiative, after its founders concluded the underlying business no longer made sense. This piece sets out what is publicly known about each closure-the timelines, the regulatory record, and the institutions' own stated reasons - as a factual account rather than a comparison of merit. As neo education is starting to get more boom in India, here’s a study onto the previous neo education institute in the country.

Edcom Research Desk, Akshara J Menon, August 2026

What “Neo” Education Means

Over the last two decades, a number of Indian institutions have marketed themselves as an alternative to the country's conventional degree system, either by positioning against established institutes such as the IIMs, or by building programs that sit outside the UGC/AICTE degree framework altogether. The new modern set of programs that is different from the conventional education is called neo education. It is not a regulatory category and carries no legal meaning; it simply describes institutions that present themselves as doing something different from a standard university degree, whether or not they are formally recognised to grant one.

That distinction, recognised versus unrecognised, degree-granting versus explicitly non-degree, turns out to matter a great deal when such an institution eventually closes. This article looks at two examples from different eras of that trend: the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM), which operated from 1973 to 2015, and Stoa School, an online management bootcamp that ran from 2020 to 2024. Their closures were reported for very different reasons, and the public record for each is laid out separately below.

IIPM: Founding, Claims and Recognition Status

IIPM was founded in 1973 by Malayendra Kisor Chaudhuri and later came to be associated publicly with his son, Arindam Chaudhuri. Through much of the 2000s, the institute ran extensive newspaper advertising under the line “Dare to Think Beyond the IIMs,” and at its peak operated eighteen branches across India, charging fees reported to be in the range of five to fifteen lakh rupees for programs advertised as MBA and BBA courses.

IIPM did not hold recognition from the University Grants Commission or the All India Council for Technical Education, and therefore had no statutory authority to confer MBA or BBA degrees. In its own materials, the institute pointed to an affiliation with an entity called the “International Management Institute” in Belgium. Subsequent reporting and court proceedings found that this entity had been established by the Chaudhuris themselves and held no recognition under Belgian law.

The Regulatory and Legal Record

In 2013, the UGC and AICTE filed a joint complaint against IIPM and listed it among institutions found to be operating without valid recognition. The following year, in September 2014, the Delhi High Court ruled on a public interest litigation concerning IIPM's advertising. The court held that the institute's promotional material created a misleading impression about the recognition status of its courses, and ordered IIPM and Arindam Chaudhuri to stop using the terms “MBA,” “BBA,” “Management Course,” “Management School,” “Business School” or “B-School” in any public representation. The court also directed a cost payment to the Delhi Legal Services Authority.

In May 2015, Delhi Police registered a First Information Report against Arindam Chaudhuri, acting on a complaint from the UGC. Two months later, in July 2015, IIPM announced that it would close all campuses outside Delhi once students already enrolled had completed their courses, and would afterward continue only as a corporate training and research entity based in Delhi. In public statements at the time, Chaudhuri described the decision as a choice to step back from a regulatory process he called complex, and referred to what he termed a sustained negative media campaign against the institute.

One part of that media coverage came from Careers360, an education portal whose founder, Maheshwer Peri, had questioned IIPM's published placement and salary figures. Chaudhuri filed defamation suits against Peri in several states over this reporting. Those suits were contested rather than settled, and were withdrawn by Chaudhuri around the time IIPM's campuses closed.

Stoa School: Founding, Model and Funding

Stoa School was founded in October 2020 by Aditya Kulkarni and Raj Kunkolienkar. Unlike IIPM, it did not describe itself as a degree program at any point. Its main offering, a six-month cohort-based program priced at roughly two and a half lakh rupees, was built for working professionals and marketed explicitly as an alternative and not a substitute for a traditional MBA. The company raised seed funding from investors including Zerodha's Nithin Kamath, CRED's Kunal Shah, and Udemy and Maven co-founder Gagan Biyani.

Over roughly four years, Stoa ran fifteen cohorts and enrolled about fifteen hundred students in programs covering strategy, general management, and related skills. It did not seek, and was not required to seek, UGC or AICTE recognition, since it never represented its program as an academic degree.

How the Closure Unfolded

The company paused admissions for a period in 2022. By November 2023, it had laid off twenty-five employees; company figures cited in press reports showed revenue for the previous financial year at close to sixteen crore rupees, with losses narrowing but still present. Admissions were paused again in mid-2024, which the founders described publicly at the time as a pause for reassessment rather than a closure.

In November 2024, Stoa co founder Raj Kunkolienkar shared an honest note on LinkedIn: after four years, the alternative business program was winding down. The reason was fairly straightforward. Once the world reopened after the pandemic, people grew tired of spending all day on Zoom, and interest in online bootcamps took a real hit. Other players, such as Masters' Union and Mesa School of Business, were investing heavily in physical campuses. But Stoa chose not to follow that route. The team knew going offline would bring huge overheads, pushing tuition fees higher and going against its core mission of keeping quality business education affordable. Unlike traditional degree providers, Stoa had always been clear that it was an upskilling program, not a university. That meant no legal complications, no government disputes and no courtroom battles. Just a clean, quiet exit on its own terms.

Relevance to Institutions Operating Today

These two cases point to two separate questions that are useful to ask separately when assessing any institution that markets itself as an alternative to conventional education.

–      Recognition status: does the institution claim or imply an accreditation, ranking or degree-granting authority it does not actually hold? This can generally be checked against public UGC, AICTE and NAAC records before enrolling.

–      Operating stability: even where an institution makes no false claims about its status, does its funding, enrolment and revenue trajectory suggest it can sustain multi-year programs, placement networks and alumni support?

A number of institutions currently active in this space ­­- including Masters' Union, Mesa School of Business, Scaler, Newton School, Woxsen and Plaksha ­­- were reviewed for this piece. None of them is currently subject to the kind of regulatory action IIPM faced. That does not, by itself, indicate anything about their long-term stability ­­- a question closer to the one Stoa's closure raises than the one IIPM's does.

Conclusion

IIPM's closure followed a High Court order and a criminal complaint tied to its recognition claims. Stoa's closure followed a business decision by its founders, without any comparable regulatory involvement. The two cases are often discussed together because both institutions described themselves publicly as an alternative to conventional management education, but the record shows the underlying reasons for their closures were not the same, and the public documentation available for each reflects that difference. Even though neo education is currently getting the attention, as they are claiming that they are different from the traditional degree a person might get, students are always advised to review about the course and institute they are planning to invest on.

Sources

–      Wikipedia-Indian Institute of Planning and Management; Arindam Chaudhuri

–      Delhi High Court order, September 2014, on the public interest litigation against IIPM, as reported by Scroll.in and Grokipedia

–      Business Standard-report on IIPM's campus closures, 2015

–      The Wire - report on IIPM ending admissions

–      India.com- report on the 2015 Delhi Police FIR against Arindam Chaudhuri

–      EducationWorld- feature coverage of IIPM's history and closure

–      Scroll.in - account of the defamation litigation involving Careers360 founder Maheshwer Peri

–      ETV Bharat - report on Stoa School's closure and the founders' stated reasons

–      The Ken - feature on Stoa School's closure and India's altMBA sector

–      BW Disrupt -report on Stoa School's closure