The ideas that keep returning in the story: what was inherited, what was learned, and what is still being practised.
- Rajahmundry RootsGodavari
- LeadershipPublic administration
- Public ServiceInstitutions
- Giving Back to the CommunityCommunity first
- EducationContinuous process
- PunctualityFather's lesson
- ResilienceMother's strength
- IntegrityDaily discipline
A career that kept returning to the classroom.
Five institutions, one vocation.
The first chapter was not academic. It was industry, in the early nineties: operations, balance sheets somebody actually had to sign, and the slow realisation that the most interesting problems were the ones nobody had yet written a case about.
A doctorate at IIM Calcutta turned that realisation into a discipline, with a dissertation on the financial performance and diversification strategy of Indian business groups. Then came two decades of teaching finance and accounting at XLRI Jamshedpur and IIM Kozhikode, a sabbatical to LBSNAA in Mussoorie that became a second vocation training the country's civil servants, his tenure as Director of IIM Raipur (2022-2025), and the Vice Chancellorship of RV University.
Alongside the appointments there have been books, co-authored with Cambridge, Routledge, McGraw Hill and Sage, that have travelled further than any lecture hall: well past four lakh copies, into classrooms their author has never visited.
I did not leave industry for academia. I carried industry into it.
Coming from an orthodox Marwari-Maheshwari family, the question I get asked often is why I chose to be a professor instead of a businessman or join the corporate world?
The answer to this question lies in my simple middle-class upbringing besides my inherent stubbornness to step outside of stereotypical boxes assigned to me.
My paternal grandfather was a ‘Munim’ (accountant/book-keeper) in Dharmabad, Maharashtra. In the tradition of Marwari Maheshwaris, he indulged in Trust-based trade, collected interest from money leant to others from his savings, managing to acquire sizeable property by these means.
He frowned upon corrupt practices and neither did he accept any gifts nor did he approve of others accepting such things. He instilled this value in me from early on.From my grandfather
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