Professor Lakshmi Kumar has been associated with IFMR Graduate School of Business (GSB) since January 2000. She previously served as Dean, IFMR GSB from March 2022 to August 2026. Prior to assuming the role of Dean, she held several administrative positions, including MBA Chair, PhD Chair, EMBA Chair and Alumni Chair. She teaches courses in Macroeconomics, Managerial Economics, International Business, Microfinance and Entrepreneurship, both at the business school and through management development programmes for corporates and the government.

She is passionate about understanding the financial behaviour of low-income households, rural livelihoods and analysis of government-provided basic services. Professor Lakshmi  Kumar has also participated in various field-based studies in Tamil Nadu, including projects sponsored by Harvard University, DFID UK, NSE India, University of California, Irvine and NABARD, India.

Her educational background includes a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics (1984), a Master’s in Econometrics (1987) from the University of Madras, and PhD from IIT Madras in 2008.

Research

• Macro Economic Modelling & Analysis
• Development Economics, including Education, Health and Poverty Reduction
• Entrepreneurship, including Incubation and Accelerator Model

Publications

• Augustine, B., & Kumar, L. (2020). Original Sin, Currency Depreciation and External Debt Burden: Evidence from India. International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, 10(3), 58-68.
• Thomas, A., & Kumar, L. (2019). Unconventional monetary policy spillovers: Evidence from India. Journal of Public Affairs, 19(4), e1940.
• Dash, S. K. & Kumar, L. (2018). Does Inflation Harm Saving? Evidence from India, Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, 12(4), 431-457
• Lakshmi Kumar and Swati Dutta (2015), Is Poverty Stochastic or Structural in Nature? Evidence from Rural India, Social Indicators Research, August 2015.
• Lakshmi Kumar and Swati Dutta(2015), Role of mobile money in replacing cash:A study among migrant workers in South India, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.L(Issue 28).
• Lakshmi Kumar, (2014), Cooperative Banks in India:Alternative Banks Impervious to the Global Crisis in Alternative Banking and Financial Crisis, edited by Oliver Butzbach and Kurt von Mettenheim, Pickerings and Chatto Publishers, UK
• Lakshmi Kumar and Jyoti Prasad Mukhopadhyay. (2013), SHGs and Micro finance: A tale of two poor women in rural Tamil Nadu, Journal of Rural Development, Vol.32, No. 3.
• Swati Dutta and Lakshmi Kumar (2013) Poverty Dynamics in Rural India: An Asset-Based Approach, Margin,Vol 7, No. 4.
• Lakshmi Kumar (2013) Illusion of Women Empowerment in Microfinance: A Case Study, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.48 (Issue 15)
• Lakshmi Kumar, D Malathy, L S Ganesh ( 2011), The diffusion of ATM technology in Indian Banking, Journal of Economics Studies, Vol. 38 (Issue 4).
• Lakshmi Kumar, Swati Dutta and Anitha Rao (2011) Can Literacy Alleviate Poverty? A study of Indian States, The Asian Economic Review, 53 (Issue 2).
• Lakshmi Kumar, D Malathy, L S Ganesh (2010), Productivity growth and efficiency change in Indian Banking-Technology effect versus Catch up effect, Journal of Advances in Management Research, Vol. 8 (Issue 2).
• Lakshmi Kumar and R Madhumathi (2004) Multifactor evaluation and forecasting of Bank performance in India.

Projects

• Studying the impact of various types of pedagogy with respect to learning outcomes in the MBA classroom. This was just a pilot. (2021)
• Studying the impact of no detention policy of the government of India on primary students. Further studying the impact of outcome-based education in India. (2021)
• Effectiveness of market-led development approaches in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review protocol. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education, University College London. (2017)
• Worked on a project to understand the impact of education on microfinance clients in Southern India. In this project we did a pre assessment before skill education was imparted to select clients and assessed its impact on their performance. (2016). The project was sponsored by an NGO called Hand-in-hand.
• Remittance by Migrants in India, CDFI (2016)
• Worked on a CII project to understand the progress made by women exemplars as chosen by them. (2014-15).
• Worked on a NABARD project on understanding voluntary savings among SHG members and SHGs as agents of change. (2014-15).
• Worked on an IMTFI (University of California, Irvine) sponsored project to understand how mobile money has replaced cash among migrant workers in South India. (2013-14).
• Worked on a field based project with a grant from Center for Microfinance titled “Multiple Borrowing and its Sources” (2011-12).
• Worked on a field based project with a grant from Center for Micro Finance titled “Livelihood or Entrepreneurship in Micro Finance: The key is networking” (2011-12).
• Worked on an IMTFI (University of California, Irvine) sponsored project to understand and compare the saving and consumption strategies among the rural and urban ultra poor in India (2010-11).
• Built a theoretical framework titled “Markow Models of poverty” and working on building the same empirically (2009-12).
• Worked on a field-based project sponsored by a grant from Ford Foundation titled “The Illusion of Women Empowerment in Micro Finance” (2009-10).
• Prepared a part of the Pondicherry State Development Report, a project sponsored by the Union Planning Commission of India (2004-06).
• Worked on a Harvard University sponsored project to identify the user cost of education and health in the state of Tamil Nadu (2000 -2002).

Teaching

• Macro Economics
• Managerial Economics
• International Business
• Entrepreneurship
• Economics of Micro Finance