The portal will be designed by students and will also earn revenues for the institute. "The purpose behind the exercise is to have a direct rapport with businesses and students all over the world. Since we cannot go physically, we are taking the web route," says IIM-A faculty Rajanish Dass, who is associated with the information systems group of the institute.

The more-than-four-decades-old institute will create an institutional archive to showcase its achievements through the portal that is under construction.

As many as 6,000 case studies that were either bought by the institute or written by the faculty members are ready to go to the public. There, however, will be a price tag. This apart, a huge repository of research papers, theses and official documents among other things are being digitised and indexed to create a database that will be accessible to the institute authorities and public as per the requisition through the portal.

`The task of creating the look and feel of the web portal has been given to the students of IIM-A, NID and MICA as part of a competition initiated by the institute for the purpose. We will pick up the best entries from the three institutes and will implement them,'' said Mr Dass.

The case studies have either been written by the faculty members or sourced from top global B-schools. It will use digital watermarking system to sell them to interested people outside the institute. ``The exercise will allow the institute to showcase the rich legacy that it has been accumulating ever since its inception. This will be the first time that IIM-A will have a web portal to allow people from across the world to know the institute better,'' Mr Dass said.