We are glad to announce that Prof Vinod Kumar (Associate Professor of Finance, IFMR GSB); Prof Jayasankar Ramanathan (Associate Professor of Marketing, IFMR GSB); Prof VN Rajesh (Associate Professor of Data Science and Information Systems, IFMR GSB) and Prof Gayathri Sampath (Associate Professor of Strategy, IFMR GSB) have joined Krea University!
Prof Vinod Kumar
Dr. Vinod Kumar graduated with a doctoral title in Finance & Accounting from the Indian Institute of Management Indore in March 2017. Prior to this, he earned a PGDM (Finance and Economics) from IIM Lucknow and a Bachelor in Science (Mathematics) from the University of Allahabad. He has 20 years of industrial experience of working in EPFO.
His teaching interests include financial engineering, corporate valuation, investment management, financial management, quantitative application in finance, international finance, economic growth and development. His primary research interests is the Asset pricing, financial market, IPO, behavioural finance, and growth economics
His research papers (published / conference) and current projects include streams of finance and economics as diverse as financial economics to valuation theories. In addition, he has attended several national and international level conferences.
His personal interests include cooking, writing, social work, and readings in history, science discoveries, philosophy, politics, and psychology.
Prof Jayasankar Ramanathan
Fellow – Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode
Jayasankar Ramanathan is an Associate Professor of Marketing at IFMR GSB, Krea University. His research interests include Understanding Stock Market/Consumer Reactions to Marketing/Ethics Phenomena. His teaching interests include many subjects in Marketing such as Marketing Management, Brand Management, Marketing Research, and Marketing Ethics.
Jayasankar Ramanathan completed doctoral studies from the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode. Before joining the doctoral program, he was employed as a Programmer Analyst at Cognizant Technology Solutions and was a member of the R&D team at Cognizant Academy. After completing the doctoral program, he was employed as a Visiting Assistant Professor and then as an Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Management Indore and then as an Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Management Visakhapatnam. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan.
Prof VN Rajesh
Dr. V. N. Rajesh is a seasoned Data Science and Business Analytics Professional with 15 + years of experience in Data Sciences. His rich and diverse experience has seen him engaged in multiple roles that include but are not limited to analytics and data science project delivery, product and platform development, data science consulting & research, Business Analytics COE establishment, and pre-sales & business development activities. He has designed and deployed analytical solutions for multiple clients across global markets in domains as diverse as Banking & Financial Services, Insurance, Retail, Healthcare, Railroad, Hospitality and Manufacturing. He has worked with leading IT service providers including Cognizant Technology Solutions, Hexaware, Wipro and Tech Mahindra. In his previous engagement, he was involved in the design and implementation of cutting-edge analytical solutions and policies to foster data-driven decision-making in the Government sector.
In academia, Rajesh worked as Assistant Professor with the IT & Systems Group of Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIML) and as Visiting Associate Professor, Industrial Engineering Group, Mechanical Engineering Area of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), in Madrid, Spain. Rajesh has been an active researcher and has contributed 20+ articles to leading international technical conferences (IEEE ICDM, IEEE IRI, etc.) and refereed journals. Primarily an engineer, Rajesh holds a Bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering (B.E. (Honors)) from the University of Bombay and has completed the Fellow Program in Management (FPM) from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB).
Prof Gayathri Sampath
Gayathri Sampath, Ph.D. is a seasoned management professional with over 20 years of industry and academic experience. After her MBA from NMIMS (Mumbai), she worked for over 10 years with Deloitte India; Avalon Consulting providing consulting solutions to reputed Indian and global organisations. Her assignments included advising companies on Marketing and Business Strategy including Go-to market strategies, Opportunity Identification, Entry strategies and Evaluating Business Models and Plans. She then moved to head the Research and Consulting Practice at SmartAnalyst India, the Indian arm of SmartAnalyst Inc – a knowledge service provider to Fortune 10 companies. At SmartAnalyst, Gayathri put together a young team of researchers comprising fresh graduates and postgraduates who could provide analytical insights and custom research services to the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. Her experiences in working with her young team at SmartAnalyst led her to appreciate the importance of building a pool of trained talent who could be absorbed in the knowledge-based service industries, and she started V-Skill solutions with a colleague. V-Skill was among the top 50 businesses shortlisted for venture capital funding in the inaugural Economic Times Power of Ideas competition.
Her experiences in the corporate world fuelled a desire for greater understanding of the drivers of strategic thinking and prompted a switch to academics in 2011. She was awarded her PhD from NMIMS – School of Business (Mumbai) and joined them as full-time faculty in the Business; Strategy Department in 2015. At SBM she designed and delivered various courses relating to strategic management in the MBA and PhD program. Her portfolio of courses included Ethical issues in management, Dimensions of strategy implementation, Managing strategic alliances, International business management, Understanding business models and plans and Strategic management. Her electives were almost always fully subscribed, and she was consistently rated by students as one of the best faculty for strategy courses. She is trained in the Harvard case-based pedagogy and uses case and simulation-based pedagogy extensively in her courses.
Her research work has been in organisational strategic agility and digital payments. She has presented her research work at conferences and published papers in domestic and international journals. She has written two cases published with Ivey Publishing on a pan India running club (Striders) and a well-known social enterprise (Shrujan) which are used in various strategy courses. She is currently working on an international research project on women social entrepreneurs and two case studies on social entrepreneurship models. She is fascinated by the impact of mythology on management and is pursuing a course on comparative mythology. She hopes to connect mythology and managerial styles in her next research project.