Delhi NCR

Meeting people at Pearl Academy

Pearl Academy is a private design school where life runs on studio deadlines and portfolio juries rather than lecture halls, with campuses in New Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur and Bengaluru and programmes from fashion to film and gaming.

The story of Pearl Academy

Pearl Academy of Fashion was founded in 1993 by the Little People Education Society, the education arm of House of Pearl Fashions, a garment export group. The idea was simple: India's fashion industry needed trained designers and merchandisers, so an industry family built a school to supply them. In 1995 Pearl began offering degrees validated by Nottingham Trent University in the UK.

In 2011 Pearl joined Laureate International Universities, and in July 2019 Global University Systems, a Netherlands-based education group, bought it for a reported 2,500 crore rupees. Along the way it expanded beyond fashion into communication design, interiors, product design, film, gaming and business.

The Jaipur campus, designed by the architecture firm Morphogenesis, is the most talked-about building in the network and a regular stop for architecture students.

What the campus is like socially

Pearl's rhythm is set by studios. Critique sessions, juries and submission nights shape the semester more than written exams, and friendships form over late nights in the labs. Students move between a makers lab, design lab, photography studio, a tech lab with VR headsets and 3D printers, and a virtual production lab with green screens and motion capture.

Being in New Delhi means fashion weeks, galleries and the wider Delhi college scene are close at hand. Many students build their own work outside class, from styling shoots to content projects, and exchanges with partner schools abroad add an international angle.

Traditions every Pearl Academy student knows

• Graduation showcase: Final-year students present their collections and projects to industry, the biggest moment of the Pearl calendar.
• Jury week: The end-of-term portfolio reviews that every Pearl student plans their semester around.
• Studio all-nighters: Submission nights in the labs are a shared rite of passage across fashion, design and media.
• Exchange semesters: Credit transfer agreements with schools like Manchester Metropolitan University, Academy of Art University and Rochester Institute of Technology let students study abroad.

Campus lore and insider spots

• Born from an export house: Pearl is one of the few Indian design schools founded by a garment exporter, which explains its industry-first flavour.
• The Jaipur building: The Morphogenesis-designed Jaipur campus is a fixture of architecture talks and campus tours.
• From fashion to gaming: A school that began as Pearl Academy of Fashion now teaches film, gaming and virtual production too.

How to find your people here

At Pearl Academy, your studio batch is the fastest way to build a circle, and the annual design showcase is where you meet people from other years.

Fests and societies at Pearl Academy

Notable societies

• Student council and campus societies
• Design and photography studios
• Exchange programme

Societies worth knowing at Pearl Academy

• Student council and societies: Student-run groups organise events, socials and showcases across campuses.
• Photography and film crews: Students from media and communication programmes shoot fashion stories, short films and campus content.
• Makers Lab community: Product and fashion students prototype together, often across disciplines.
• Business school projects: Pearl's School of Business runs projects in brand management and the business side of creative industries.

Careers, internships and placements

Pearl reports a 99% placement record for 2023 and offers lifetime placement support. Graduates go into fashion brands and retail, design studios, media, e-commerce, interiors and product companies, depending on the programme.

Portfolios matter more than grades in design hiring, so internships, live projects and graduation showcases are what open doors. With more than 15,000 alumni, the network spans most of India's fashion and design industry.

Notable alumni

• Keerthy Suresh: National Award-winning actor who completed a degree in fashion design at Pearl Academy in Bengaluru.
• Alisshaa Ohri: Model and actor, listed among Pearl Academy alumni.

Rivalries and eternal debates

The constant comparison is with NIFT, the government fashion school with campuses in the same cities. NIFT fans point to its national entrance and public status, while Pearl students point to industry ties, new disciplines like gaming and film, and international exchanges. Many design students apply to both.

What Pearl Academy is talking about now

Pearl is pushing into digital creative fields, with virtual production, gaming and tech labs sitting alongside its fashion studios. Admission runs through Pearl's own entrance process.

Meeting people at Pearl Academy by interest

A lot of friendships here form around a shared interest rather than a class or a hostel wing. If you are into photography, art and sketching, running, reading and book clubs, and food and cafe hopping, those pages cover where that scene actually happens in India and how to find people near you who are into the same thing.

Colleges nearby

Pearl Academy sits close to NIFT Delhi, Lady Shri Ram College, Jesus and Mary College, and IIIT-Delhi, all part of the same Delhi NCR student scene. Cross-college friendships often start at inter-college fests, hackathons, or shared-interest communities rather than in class.

Similar campuses across India

If you are looking beyond your own campus, students at CEPT University share a similar campus culture, and Zyber works the same way at each: showing you verified people nearby who match on interest, intent, or timing.

Zyber on campus

Zyber is built for meeting people nearby in real time, with verified profiles only. At Pearl Academy, that means showing you people near you who share your interests or your drive, whether or not you overlap on a class or a society.

New to Pearl Academy? Start here

If you are just starting out, these freshers guides are written for exactly this moment: first week of college checklist, how to choose societies in college, making friends beyond your branch, and internship in first year.

See meeting people in Delhi NCR, events in Delhi NCR, the freshers guide, the Meet People pillar, or read what Zyber is.