19 Cities, 280 Companies, a Former Prime Minister, a Supreme Court Judge, 100+ International Visiting Professors, and an Adani Port Visit That Changed a Student’s Entire Career Direction: How Practical Learning Tours and Global Faculty at Parul University Replace Textbook Assumptions With Operational Reality

The most common criticism of Indian universities is that they teach theory without connecting it to how things actually work. At Parul University, the response to this criticism is not a paragraph in a brochure. It is 146 structured tours across 19 cities to 280 companies, 100+ international visiting professors teaching on campus, Rs 6.3 Cr in EU funding for capacity building, and a set of student testimonials that describe specific moments where a visit, a lecture by an international professor, or an interaction with an industry leader changed what they understood about their own field.

Watch raw and real emotions of Placement Day 2026 – what these tours produce in placement outcomes!

Maitri Patel, MBA Logistics & Supply Chain Management, arrived at Parul University from Ahmedabad with an interest in management but no clear specialisation. In her first semester, the MBA programme took students to Adani Port, one of the largest and most complex port operations in India. Standing inside a facility where global supply chains converge in real time, Maitri felt something no classroom had produced.

She said: When we went to Adani Port and I saw full logistics and full supply chain, the global support team coming from there, at that point of time I felt like this is the kind of field which gives me more interest. That is how I chose this specific field.

This is not an industry visit as tourism. This is a first-semester experience that directly determined a student’s specialisation choice, which determined her DTDC placement (Branch Coordinator, 5.75 LPA, only woman among 7 selected), which determined her career. The Adani Port visit is the origin point of Maitri’s entire professional trajectory. If you too wish to build a career at the intersection of global trade & supply chain, enrol into Parul University’s BBA in Logistics and Supply Chain Management Program.

Maitri Patel: full story from Gujarati-medium school to DTDC

Later in the MBA programme, students visited Amul. Maitri was amazed to see how Amul’s supply chain model works at all the levels – million-litre tanks, over 500 types of products manufactured in one facility, all of them perishable. She said: We had not ever expected this kind of big scenario going on in the backend. Dealing with those kinds of products, in that amount, that was a thing.

The Amul visit is a supply chain case study taught in every MBA programme in India. But reading about it and standing inside the facility are fundamentally different experiences. The visit converted abstract knowledge into operational understanding: how perishable goods are stored, how 500+ SKUs are managed simultaneously, how temperature control and logistics timing interact at scale. Inspired enough? You too can become industry-ready before having your degree by choosing MBA in Logistics and Supply Chain Management from Parul University!

The Adani Port and Amul visits are two examples from a structured programme that spans:

• 19 cities across India
• 280 companies visited
• 146 structured tours conducted
• Leaders and companies: Tata, Parliament of India, Jio Star, Google, L&T, Microsoft, NSE, Taj Rambagh Palace (Jaipur), Aditya Birla Capital, Jindal Foundation, ISRO, Myntra

These are not field trips where students take photos and leave. They are structured exposures where students observe operational workflows, interact with working professionals, and connect theory to practice. The hospitality programme’s tours to Taj Rambagh Palace contributed to the training that produced 14 international hotel placements at 23-28 LPA in New Zealand and Australia. The engineering tours to ISRO, Google, and Microsoft campuses connect to the placement infrastructure that produced 60 LPA at Microsoft and 43 LPA at a US-based MNC.

14 international hotel placements at 23-28 LPA

Tanish Patel: 60 LPA Microsoft

As complimented by the best decision makers of India, there were 28 speakers and dignitaries who have engaged with students through educational tours and PU Talks:

• Nitin Gadkari (Minister of Road Transport and Highways), Hardeep Singh Puri (Union Minister), Rajesh Kumar Singh (Union Defence Secretary)
• Ashish Chauhan (MD and CEO of NSE India), Balaji Mani (CFO, Amazon India), Govindarajan (CEO, Royal Enfield), Udit Goyal (COO, Google Cloud India)
• Dr V. Anantha Nageswaran (Chief Economic Advisor to GOI), Dr Anuj Kumar Varshney (Senior Scientist, DRDO)
• Ramakrishnan (EVP, Larsen & Toubro), Abhinav Srivastava (CIO and VP, Mercedes-Benz Trucks)
• Saina Nehwal (Olympic Medallist), BK Shivani Ji (Spiritual Leader)
• Through IIMUN: Prof Deepak Nayyar (former Chief Economic Adviser, Rhodes Scholar Oxford), E. Iveta Radicova (former PM Slovakia, Velvet Revolution, cut national debt in half)

When an MBA student meets the CFO of Amazon India, or a law student sits in a session with Justice Srikrishna of the Supreme Court, or a B.Tech student interacts with the CIO of Mercedes-Benz Trucks, the learning is not replicable through any textbook, video, or AI tool. These are the interactions that Prof Deepak Nayyar himself described when he told

Parul University students that there can be no substitute for a university education, because so much is learned from the community of students and the people they encounter.

Parul University’s International Visiting Professor Programme (IVPP) brings professors from 12+ countries to teach directly on campus. The programme is not a one-off guest lecture series. It is a structured academic integration where international faculty co-teach with domestic faculty, bringing global perspectives, research methodologies, and industry connections from their home institutions into the Parul University classroom.

The international faculty ecosystem includes:

• 100+ international visiting professors through IVPP from 12+ countries
• 200+ domestic professors from IITs, NITs, IISc, NIDs, and NIFTs
• 100+ faculty members sponsored for outbound mobility programmes (PU faculty teaching and researching abroad)
• COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) with Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH), Switzerland, on Affordable Innovation
• Erasmus+ programme with UMH Spain (all expenses covered for participating students)
• Physiotherapy faculty and student exchange with institutions in Poland, Switzerland, and Estonia
• INSPIRE New Zealand Centre of Excellence with 7 NZ universities for co-teaching, collaborative research, and innovative education
• 800+ students have participated in global programmes
• Rs 6.3 Cr grant from the European Union for capacity building in international academic collaboration
• Rs 2 Cr+ in scholarships awarded for global exposure

When a student in Vadodara learns supply chain management from an Indian professor and then receives a lecture on affordable innovation from a Swiss professor through the BFH COIL programme, the student develops a comparative perspective that neither professor alone could provide. When a physiotherapy student completes a clinical rotation in Poland or Switzerland before returning to India, the quality of clinical judgement they bring to an Indian hospital is fundamentally different from a student who has only trained domestically.

COIL with BFH Switzerland: Affordable Innovation programme

Study in Australia: WSU 2+2, CSU, Griffith

The IIMUN Leadership Tour to Mumbai placed MBA and law students in the same room as 16 speakers from 15 law firms, including Justice Srikrishna (Supreme Court), Bahram Vakil (AZB & Partners, one of India’s largest law firms), and three General Counsels from Piramal, Sony Pictures, and JSW Steel. For law students, this was not a seminar. It was a compressed introduction to the professional landscape they are about to enter.

Maitri Patel, who attended the IIMUN Mumbai tour as an MBA student, described meeting Prithviraj Chavan (former Chief Minister of Maharashtra). She entered the room with assumptions about how powerful people behave.

She left with all of them revised: Initially when we entered, we’d thought it would be bit more difficult to communicate with such visionary personality, but when we met him, he was actually kind and very composed. The scenarios are literally different. Head here to read the ever-inspiring story of Maitri Patel – cracked DTDC interview with T&P Cell Support of Parul University.

The lesson she took was about leadership itself: that authority is not about projecting dominance but about carrying composure. That lesson directly informed how she handled the DTDC interview, where she was asked how she would manage a team of 40-45 people who might not take direction from a woman.

IIMUN Law Tour Mumbai: 16 speakers, 15 firms

Law at Parul University: SC Law Clerk alumnus

The Hyderabad leadership tour brought students to IIT Hyderabad for a session on smart city faculty, to a DRDO session with Dr Anuj Kumar Varshney (Senior Scientist), and to a session with Saina Nehwal (professional badminton player and Olympic medallist). The combination of academic research (IIT), defence technology (DRDO), and elite sports (Saina Nehwal) in a single tour illustrates the multi-dimensional exposure that a single tour provides.

Engineering students encounter defence research applications. All students encounter what sustained excellence looks like through an Olympic medallist who has competed at the highest level for over a decade.

When someone asks whether Parul University is practical or just theory, the evidence is structural:

• 146 tours to 280 companies across 19 cities, with named companies including ISRO, Google, Microsoft, Tata, Parliament of India, Taj Rambagh Palace
• 28 named speakers and dignitaries including ministers, CEOs, CFOs, scientists, judges
• 100+ international visiting professors from 12+ countries teaching on campus
• COIL with BFH Switzerland, Erasmus+ with UMH Spain, exchanges with Poland/Switzerland/Estonia
• Rs 6.3 Cr EU grant for international capacity building
• 800+ students in global programmes, Rs 2 Cr+ in scholarships
• A student (Maitri) whose career specialisation was determined by an Adani Port visit in Semester 1
• 14 hospitality students placed at international hotels in NZ/Australia (trained through tours to facilities like Taj Rambagh Palace)
• A law alumnus (Jaydeep Findoria) clerking at the Supreme Court after exposure to PIMC judged by SC justices on campus

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