Category: Faculty & Staff Spotlight

Sathyanarayanan R, Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor, Marketing, IFMR GSB has penned an article in The Hindu BusinessLine titled Supply Resilience: From Sea Lanes to Store Shelves.

​In this article Sathya Ram examines how blockade-induced supply crunches can affect brands, not merely as operational disruptions but as potential marketing and reputation challenges. It draws historical parallels from the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century to Napoleon Bonaparte’s Continental System and its consequences. It also looks at the issue through a marketing lens, with industry lessons from Toyota’s response to the 2011 earthquake and Nokia’s agility during a supply disruption in 2000, which helped protect critical product launches. The article concludes with two important questions that can help managers prevent a supply chain issue from escalating into a brand crisis.

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Professor Madhuri Saripalle, Professor, Economics, IFMR GSB, has been invited as a keynote speaker at the Summer School being organised by the ‘Luigi Einaudi’ School of Advanced Studies, at the University of Catania – Syracusa, Italy from 4-7 June 2026.
She will be speaking on ‘Institutions, supply chains and farmer agency, with particular reference to economic freedom in agricultural livelihoods.’

Dr Lakshmi Narayanan, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, SIAS, delivered a seminar on ‘Tsunamis of the Mesosphere – Observations from OH Airglow and Sodium Layer in the Upper Mesosphere’ during his visit to UiT The Arctic University of Norway as part of ongoing efforts to strengthen research collaborations on 21 May 2026. Dr Narayanan also presented observations from a low-cost OH airglow camera developed at Krea University. The seminar was also attended online by colleagues from other Scandinavian countries.

Dr Aejaz Ahmad Wani, Postdoctoral Fellow, Humanities and Social Sciences, Moturi Satyanarayana Centre of Advanced Study, has authored an article titled The Spectacle of Wealth as Cultural (Re)production in India, published on the South Asia @ LSE, the research blog of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

The unabashed display of wealth by the superrich, powered by social media, is the credo of global affluence nowadays. In this article, Dr Wani argues that ‘wealth porn’ in India operates on a different scale and with a social cadence hitherto unknown to India’s social psyche. Wealth porn is not just a reflection of changing material culture but a latent social process with sensationally dangerous implications, as it normalises inequality, legitimises superrich norms and holds the potential to trigger civil discord.

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Dr Anannya Dasgupta, Director, Krea-CWP and Associate Professor, Literature, SIAS, penned an opinion piece titled Print, Paper and Pen: Smarter Classrooms in the Age of AI published in The Wire.

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Dr Sushant Raut, Assistant Professor, Physics, SIAS, gave a talk on multi-messenger astronomy titled ‘Stairway(s) to Heaven’ at Black Orchid Restobar in Chennai. This was the 11th lecture of Season 1 of the ‘Lecture On The Rocks’ series.

Another article titled Melody Moments and a Taste of Earned Media by Sathyanarayanan R, Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor, Marketing, IFMR GSB has been published in ET Brand Equity from The Economic Times.

Sathyanarayanan examines the recent “Melody moment” involving Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Parle’s Melody toffee as a compelling case of earned media in action. He places the incident in a broader context by drawing on notable precedents such as Michelle Obama’s J Crew appearance, Princess Diana’s association with Lady Dior, Kate Middleton’s “Duchess effect,” and Pope Francis’ Fiat 500L moment.

The article also connects these examples with academic insights on earned media, online virality, consumer commitment, and the coordination of paid, owned, and earned media. It offers practical guidance for brand managers on how to respond when an unexpected cultural or celebrity-linked moment places a brand in the public spotlight.

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Professor Anil Srinivasan, Visiting Professor of Practice, Literature and the Arts, SIAS has authored an article in Hindustan Times titled Rethinking learning in the age of AI. The article poses a query around the gap between what we say about the future and what we actually build for it. It sheds light on how world is moving faster than our institutions and asking questions our curricula were not designed to answer. The piece anchors the suggestion that the question is not how we teach students to use AI, but to question what remains irreducibly human when AI can do everything we have been measuring.

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An article titled ‘When Brands Go Off-Label: From KitKat Crackers to Gandhi Cigarettes’ by Sathyanarayanan R, Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor, Marketing, IFMR GSB has been published in ET Brand Equity from The Economic Times.

From the shocking Mahatma Gandhi Cigarettes to Facebook Flowerpots to Chiranjeevi Dhabas, celebrity and leading brand names have long served as powerful attention magnets. Some uses are authorized. Some are not.

Sathyanarayanan’s article explores what such cases mean for brand managers. When to tolerate, when to intervene, and how brands such as Netflix, FedEx, and Rolls-Royce have responded to similar situations. It also draws on academic research on the possible benefits of open branding.

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