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MBA office announces winners of Merit Scholarships from the MBA batch of 2023

We are delighted to announce the winners of the Merit Scholarships from the MBA batch of 2023. This year, IFMR GSB offered three full scholarships to the top three candidates. The scholarships are given based purely on merit, assessed through school and college academic records, work experience, standardised test scores, writing ability, and the candidate’s performance in the personal interview (PI) round with the faculty.

The Winners are
1.     Akhil Arengath
2.     Parasaran Sarangan
3.     Sivacharan Peruri

They hail from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh respectively. Congratulations to the winners!

MBA Office releases the medal winners, merit scholarship awardees, and Dean’s Merit List from the IFMR GSB MBA batch of 2019-21

We are delighted to share the list of medal winners, merit scholarship awardees and the Dean’s Merit List at IFMR Graduate School of Business (IFMR GSB), Krea University from the MBA batch of 2019-21.

Medal winners: 

The first three medals – the C.M.Kothari Medal; the A.Sivasailam Medal; the A.M.M. Arunachalam Medal – are awarded to students based on their academic performance (CGPA) at the end of their two-year MBA programme.

The HT Parekh Medal is given to a student for their best all-round performance in academics and extracurricular activities.

Here is the list of winners:

S.NONameRankMedal
1Swasti1st rankC.M.Kothari Medal 
2Harini G2nd rankA.Sivasailam Medal 
3Sonu Agarwal3rd rankA.M.M. Arunachalam Medal
4Srishti MaheshwariBest all-round performanceHT Parekh Medal 

Dean’s Merit List (Batch of 2019-21):

The top 5% students in a batch, on the basis of academic performance (CGPA) at the end of second year, will be included in the Dean’s Merit List. Below are the students from the MBA batch of 2019-21 who made it to the Dean’s Merit List:

S.NOName
1Aditya Logad
2Tanmoy Acherjee
3Utkarsh Srivastava
4Srishti Maheshwari
5Sumit Jha
6Modi Yash Kamleshbhai

Merit Scholarships (MBA batch of 2021):

We are also delighted to share the list of students who secured the Merit Scholarship. Merit scholarships are awarded to the students securing top four ranks, based on the CGPA at the end of the second year.

The Merit Scholars from the MBA batch of 2019-21 are:

S.NOName
1Swasti
2Harini G
3Sonu Agarwal
4Aditya Logad

My Summer Internship Story: Srutarshi Chakrabarti (MBA Cohort of 2022)

Did you focus on a specific domain while participating in summer placements? 

During my summer placements, I focused on the role and how it aligns with my career interests. I stressed a lot on the learning part of the internship and wanted an internship in such a domain that would provide me with aspects of both finance, analytics and strategy.

My preparation strategy included regularly attending my classes and doing certification courses on the side with the intent of improving my knowledge and staying updated about the industry.

What was your internship experience like?

My internship has been really smooth, with a lot of lessons. My internship began on a promising note thanks to the seamless onboarding process, followed by regular virtual meet-ups. Over the course of my internship, I was fully guided by my mentor who made this journey even more satisfying and provided me several opportunities to learn, grow and improve my skills.

What were the key challenges you faced during your internship and how did you overcome them?

One of the challenges I faced during this time was the virtual mode of the internship. However, the extent to which I was connected to my mentor and other employees at Samunnati kept me going and helped me turn those challenges into opportunities.

What were your learnings? Are there any milestones you would like to share?

My internship at Samunnati was my first exposure to the corporate world. It helped me get my first experience of how the corporate world breathes and functions. Besides learning several aspects of Finance, Strategy, Analytics and Programming as part of this internship, my main milestone in this internship was that I learnt to include learning as a continuing and evolving process, which is important if you want to reach your full potential.

What values/skills can a B-School student gain from a summer internship?

An internship is very crucial for an MBA student. In many cases, an internship serves as a perfect window to discovering the corporate world. It enables the student to understand the basic values that are considered in organisations, and also helps them frame their mindset for a successful work life in the corporate world.

How did IFMR GSB help you during your internship?

During the course of my internship, my mentor and I were frequently connected through video calling platforms, phone calls, social media, and text messages. Thanks to their guidance and support, I had a fruitful experience overall during my internship.

With the internship happening virtually owing to the COVID-19 crisis, how did you navigate your way through this new experience?

The idea of not being in a physical workplace used to make me apprehensive. The internship, however, quelled those apprehensions away because I was connected with my team and mentor more than I would have in person! The environment was welcoming enough, preparing to accept this new norm of the workplace.

Could you tell us how the remote working experience was with respect to building team rapport, internal communication and work as a whole?

During my internship, I was connected to my team through several video-calling platforms in addition to social media and regular phone calls. The extent to which we were communicating each day, and working on our project, despite this virtual mode, is nothing short of extraordinary.

Is there a fond memory or milestone from your internship that you would like to share?

My most memorable incident was the team meeting with the credit team on proposing the project for adoption that we were working on. The meeting was a great success and the project was accepted for later stages of testing and development.

New Faculty appointments at IFMR GSB, Krea University

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.

Conference paper authored by IFMR GSB PhD scholar and faculty wins ‘Best Doctoral Paper Award’!

IFMR Graduate School of Business (IFMR GSB) at Krea University PhD Scholar Ameesh Samalopanan and Prof Vijayalakshmi Balasubramaniam together authored two papers that are all set to be presented at two different conferences. 

Their conference paper “Defining Dignity at Workplace: A Step Closer Towards Responsible Management”, won this year’s Eastern Academy of Management Conference (EAM) ‘Best Doctoral Paper’ award. The EAM conference took place virtually from 18-22 May 2021. 

‘How Indian Managers Define Dignity at Workplace: Exploratory Study on Indian Financial Sector’, a second paper jointly authored by them, will be presented at the upcoming European Academy of Management Conference (EURAM 2021) next month. 

‘Social Science and Medicine’ Journal accepts impactful paper on supply chain co-authored by Prof Vijaya Subramanian

Prof Vijaya Subramanian — Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor of Operations Management at IFMR GSB — has co-authored a paper titled “Essential medicine shortages, procurement process and supplier response: A normative study across Indian states”. Accepted in the “Social Science and Medicine” journal, the paper analyses the supply chain factors leading to essential medicine shortages in the public health system in India. Access the paper here.

Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University accepts paper for presentation authored by Dr Shobha Das

Dr Shobha Das, Dean – IFMR GSB at Krea University, will present her paper “Transitional Entrepreneurs in the Gulf: Examining transnational temporary migrant entrepreneurship in Qatar” at a virtual conference hosted by Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University. Adhering to the theme of the conference — ‘Transitional Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship among Veterans, Women, Minorities, Immigrants, Refugees’ — the paper will be presented next month. Know more here.

MBA Office releases the list of medal winners and Dean’s Merit List awardees from the MBA cohort of 2020

We are delighted to share the list of medal winners and awardees of the Dean’s Merit List at IFMR Graduate School of Business (IFMR GSB), Krea University for the MBA cohort of 2020. 

Medal winners (cohort of 2020): 

The medals are awarded to students based on their academic performance, as well as extracurricular activities. Students who are ranked in the top 5% in their respective cohort on the basis of their academic performance (CGPA) at the end of the second-year are included in the Dean’s Merit List. 

Medal Criterion Student Name 
C.M. Kothari Medal 1st Rank Venkidesh Harikumar 
A. Sivasailam Medal 2nd Rank Prabhu G 
A.M.M. Arunachalam Medal3rd Rank Anjula Singh 
H.T. Parekh Medal best all-round performance*  (subject to CGPA at least 3.5) Aman Sharma 

Dean’s Merit List: 

Merit Order Student Name Final CGPA 
1 Venkidesh H 4.03 
2 Prabhu G 3.99 
3 Anjula Singh 3.90 
4 Bharath P 3.80 
5 Apoorva Arora 3.78 
6 Samardeep Verma 3.74 
7 Radhika Chaudhry 3.72 
8 Sagarika Raja 3.71 
9 Sowmya Ramakrishnan 3.71 

Research paper by two IFMR GSB professors to be presented at the 37th International Conference of the French Finance Association

Dr Praveen Bhagawan, Assistant Professor of Finance – IFMR Graduate School of Business at Krea University, and Dr Jyoti Prasad Mukhopadhyay, Associate Professor of Economics – IFMR Graduate School of Business at Krea University, have together worked on an impactful research paper titled “Does Mandatory Expenditure on CSR Affect Firm Value? Empirical Evidence from Indian Firms”. The paper has been accepted for presentation at the 37th International Conference of the French Finance Association, to be held next month. The selected papers at the conference will be published in a special issue of Journal of Banking & Finance – currently ranked A in the ABDC list of journals 2019.

Sundram Fasteners Limited to support 4 faculty positions at Krea

In an effort to encourage Krea University’s talented faculty in their research interests and academic endeavours, Chennai-based manufacturing company Sundram Fasteners Limited (SFL) have come on board to support 4 faculty positions in Science and Business. The proud recipients of this grant are- Prof Bharath Sundaram for Sundram Fasteners Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies; Prof Rishi Vyas for Sundram Fasteners Assistant Professor of Mathematics; Prof R Sathyanarayanan for Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor of Marketing; and Prof Vijaya Subramanian for Sundram Fasteners Associate Professor of Operations Management.