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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.

Krea University appoints Dr. Mahesh Rangarajan as Vice Chancellor

Eminent scholar of history and environmental studies to lead Krea University’s efforts to re-imagine education

31st March 2021, Sri City: Krea University announced the appointment of Dr. Mahesh Rangarajan as its next Vice Chancellor, effective July 2021. 

A scholar of global renown, Dr. Rangarajan has an MA and a DPhil, both from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.  His wide experience in academia includes faculty positions as Professor of Modern Indian History at the University of Delhi and Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Ashoka University, where he previously served as the Dean of Academic Affairs.  He has also taught at Cornell University, Indian Institute of Science and National Centre for Biological Sciences. His first book ‘Fencing the Forest’ was published in 1996 and the most recent ‘Nature and Nation’, in 2018. His co-edited works include ‘India’s Environmental History’, and ‘At Nature’s Edge’. Having started his career as a journalist, he has also served in roles outside academia, including as the Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi.

Dr. Rangarajan’s appointment by the Chancellor of Krea University, Mr. N. Vaghul, comes after a rigorous global search launched by the University last year. The search was led by a committee co-chaired by Dr. Vishakha Desai, Senior Advisor for Global Affairs to the President of Columbia University and Mr. Kapil Viswanathan, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Governing Council. Commenting on the appointment, Mr. Kapil Viswanathan, said, “As a scholar and an administrator with a global outlook, Dr. Rangarajan is well placed to further Krea University’s mission to help humanity prepare for an unpredictable world.  We look forward to Dr. Rangarajan’s leadership, building on Krea University’s strong foundations of ethics, innovation, excellence, inclusivity and accountability.”

Dr. Vishakha Desai, co-chair of the search committee added, “As a renowned scholar of history and environmental studies, Dr. Rangarajan embodies the spirit of interwoven learning that Krea University stands for. His experience in the academy and in public institutions would serve to strengthen Krea University’s commitment to bridging the intellectual world with the one beyond.”

On his appointment as Vice Chancellor, Dr. Mahesh Rangarajan said, “It is my honour and privilege to accept this position, and join the extraordinarily talented faculty, staff and students of Krea University in pursuit of our shared mission. I will strive to uphold the high standards of innovation and excellence that Krea University stands for.” Krea University’s current Vice Chancellor, Dr. Sunder Ramaswamy will complete his tenure in June 2021 and will continue to be associated with Krea as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Economics.  As the inaugural Vice Chancellor, Dr. Ramaswamy played a key role in shaping Krea University in its formative years.  

IFMR GSB students bag CMA scholarships again!

We are delighted to share that four IFMR GSB students from the MBA cohort of 2022 have received scholarships from the CMA Program, awarded by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), USA.

Our heartiest congratulations to Siddharth Poddar, Meenakshi Murugan, Nitin Kumar Khandelwal and Shreyans Bandi!

‘The Case for Women’ Global Case Writing Competition shortlists impactful case study by Prof R Sathyanarayanan

‘Happy Self Publishing’, a business management case study authored by Prof R Sathyanarayanan (Associate Professor of Marketing at IFMR Graduate School of Business – Krea University), has been shortlisted as one of the Top-6 Global finalist case studies in “The Case for Women” Global Case Writing Competition open to management faculty members around the world.

In partnership with ‘The Case for Women’ Organization and Forté Foundation, Emerald Publishing launched this case study competition focusing on the female case protagonist. Prof Sathyanarayanan’s case study — focusing on a woman-led firm in India with a successful global operation — was published earlier this month.

Access the case study here: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/CFW.2020.000008/full/html