New Delhi: For 25-year-old Sakshi Nagesh Dhole from Maharashtra, farming is not just a family business—it’s a mission. She dreams of helping farmers boost productivity and improve livelihoods, and uplift marginalised communities through better farm management and innovation.
The dream of Sakshi’s has found a new home in India’s first-ever national cooperative university, Tribhuvan Sahkari University (TSU) in Gujarat, where she has enrolled in the newly launched Master of Business Administration (MBA) programme in agribusiness management for the 2025-27 academic year.
“When I came to know about the agribusiness programme from my friends at IRMA, I immediately applied for it as I had already graduated in agriculture management,” Dhole told ThePrint.
The Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) has been restructured into Tribhuvan Sahkari University, after both houses of Parliament passed The Tribhuvan Sahkari University Bill this April.
With a family background in the farming sector, Sakshi sees great promise in the cooperative sector. “My dream is to get a placement in companies like Amul, Mother Dairy, Banas Dairy and National Dairy Development Board (NDDB),” she said.
The university marks a major step to professionalise India’s vast cooperative sector, which encompasses 30 crore members across 8.44 lakh cooperative societies, according to the government.
Apart from an MBA in agribusiness management, the university also offers MBA degrees in cooperative management, and cooperative banking and finance.
For 21-year-old Keshav Sharma from Guna district in Madhya Pradesh, who has enrolled for the MBA course in cooperative banking and finance, the programme is an opportunity to develop knowledge of various financial products and services necessary for agriculture finance in rural India.
“The subjects are well designed to provide comprehensive knowledge of cooperative societies and its workings, and through the village fieldwork segment, I am getting practical knowledge as well,” Sharma told ThePrint.
According to professor Saswata Biswas, director of IRMA and TSU, the objective behind launching these programmes was to bring in professional expertise into the management of cooperatives.
“There is a huge gap of professional manpower in the cooperative sector today; these courses will help bridge the gap by providing students with necessary knowledge and expertise related to functioning of cooperatives,” he told ThePrint.
The academic session for the first batch began in August 2025 with 60 students enrolling across the three new MBA programmes. However, the university plans to increase the intake as its infrastructure expands.
“Next academic year, we would have a total of 180 students equally distributed among the three new MBA programmes,” Biswas said. “The aim is to have 1,200 students in one batch once the new TSU campus, the foundation stone for which was laid in July 2025, gets completed.”
While students are showing interest in cooperative management programmes, Biswas said there needs to be more awareness about the university.
According to professor Satyendra Pandey, associate dean of management development programmes at TSU, marketing campaigns are being undertaken to target undergraduate students, alongside webinars for working professionals interested in cooperative management.
“We are also reaching out to students in state public universities and private universities to provide information about TSU and its programmes,” Pandey said.
The creation of TSU is part of a broader series of reforms undertaken by the Ministry of Cooperation, which has been working to modernise India’s cooperative sector since its inception in 2021.
“From the new cooperative policy to the setting up of Bharat Taxi and ongoing modernisation of primary agriculture credit societies (PACS), multiple steps are being taken to transform the cooperative sector,” a senior ministry official told ThePrint, requesting anonymity.
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Employment potential of TSU programmes
According to Biswas, the new two-year cooperative MBA programmes offer immense employment potential to students within cooperative societies across India.
“Cooperatives are very active within 18 to 20 different sectors. Diary cooperatives together account for over Rs 1.5 lakh crore of business annually, so there is immense employment potential,” he said.
Sakshi believes the agriculture sector would always have relevance in society as demand for vegetables, fruits and dairy would continue to rise.
“During Covid, many of my relatives were asked to leave from their respective legacy jobs, but the agriculture business was still growing, so there will be job opportunities,” she said.
According to Pandey, urban cooperative banks such as Saraswat Cooperative Bank have already shown interest in students of cooperative banking and finance programme, while Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative has expressed interest in students from the cooperative management stream.
On salary prospects, Biswas said it is too early to speculate as the courses have just begun. “We will only come to know about salary potential in 2027, once all students are market ready,” he said.
For 22-year-old Sumit Bhagat from Vadodara, pursuing an MBA degree in cooperative banking and finance at TSU, it is too early to think about placement and salary prospects in the first year of the programme.
“Currently, my focus is on gaining knowledge and experience, placement will happen in 2027 and I am not thinking about it now,” he told ThePrint.
Curriculum and selection
The new MBA programmes, while having similar foundational courses, would also focus on sector-specific specialisations, said Pandey.
“MBA in agribusiness management would deep dive in subjects related to agriculture finance, risk management and others, while banking and finance programmes would cover subjects related to urban cooperative banks and financial products related to the cooperative sector,” he said.
“The MBA in cooperative management programme will offer specialised courses related to innovation in cooperatives and platform-based services like Bharat Taxi.”
Admission to the cooperative MBA programmes at TSU involves clearing the Common Admission Test (CAT) or Xavier Aptitude Test (XAT) cutoff, followed by a university-conducted written test and personal interview.
“Students applying for cooperative MBA programmes at TSU must have at least 50 percent marks in their undergraduate programme,” Biswas said.
After clearing the entrance exams and written test, shortlisted candidates appear for interviews conducted across 16 state capitals.
Short-term courses
In addition to full-time MBA courses, TSU also plans to launch short-term certification courses from January 2026 aimed at existing employees, directors, and members of cooperatives.
“These courses would help improve efficiency and governance across cooperative bodies by training people already part of the cooperative sector,” Biswas said.
Pandey added that nearly 40 to 50 certification courses, lasting three to six months, are being developed that will be available in both online and offline formats to expand reach while maintaining high quality standards.
The newly formed university has already affiliated seven cooperative institutes across India to create a network of cooperative education and training. These include Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Cooperative Management, Pune; Institute of Cooperative Management, Jaipur; and others in Imphal (Manipur), Gandhinagar (Gujarat), Chandigarh, Mehsana (Gujarat) and Lucknow (UP).
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)