K. Kumar is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Chairperson in the N.S. Raghavan Center for Entrepreneurial Learning at IIMB. He had earlier served as a Visiting professor in the Corporate Strategy and Policy area at IIMB before taking over his current position. His research and teaching interests are in the area of entrepreneurship, innovation and strategic management of new ventures, both in the entrepreneurial and large corporate settings. He has a keen interest in the development and nurturing of technology led innovations into viable new businesses and revenue streams. He is actively involved in consulting with many corporate organizations and entrepreneurial ventures, guiding them in the areas of strategy, resource mobilization, organization building and managing growth and innovation. He has also been playing a consulting and advisory role in to the government in the areas of innovation and commercialization of technology.

Kumar has over 18 years of experience in the industry in various capacities. He was the first CEO of Trigent Software Ltd, a mid-sized, Bangalore based software services company, between 1995 and 2001 and later served as its President between 2005 and 2006. His previous assignment was as a Management Consultant at Tata Consultancy Services for over four years, wherein he was involved in assisting many corporate and family businesses in building and implementing strategies to cope with the liberalized and globalized environment.

He started his career with a two-year stint as a Marketing Officer with Crompton Greaves Ltd, responsible for marketing a wide range of power equipment. He spent the next three years during his career as an entrepreneur, and successfully co-promoted two ventures in the services and consumer products domains. He also served as a Product Manager at Computer Point (I) Ltd, responsible for developing a nascent market for PC based software solutions, before moving on to pursue doctoral studies at IIMB.

Kumar has a B.E degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (Madurai University) and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from IIMB. He is a Fellow of IIMB (equivalent of a Ph.D), with specialization in corporate strategy.

Prof P C Narayan is a faculty member in the Finance & Control Area of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB). Prof. Narayan has a rich and varied experience in the area of banking and financial markets. Prior to joining IIMB, he was with a private sector bank in India with management responsibility for retail banking, operations and information technology. And prior to that, he was with a multinational bank for several years, based overseas and a global banking technology company also based overseas. Apart from teaching courses in corporate finance, international banking and financial markets at IIMB, Prof. Narayan has been conducted seminars/workshops and undertaken consulting engagements with several organizations in India and abroad. His list of present and past clients include UCO Bank, Union Bank of India, Syndicate Bank, Vijaya Bank, Clearing Corporation of India (CCIL), BBK (Bahrain), DBS Bank (Singapore), State Bank of India, ICASL (Sri Lanka), etc. as well as leading information technology companies in the banking and finance domain. Having travelled to over 40 countries, and worked or implemented projects in 20 different countries, he brings a unique cross-cultural perspective and a breadth of global experience. A much sought after speaker, he has delivered several keynote addresses at various conferences and seminars organized by several institutions both in India and abroad.

Prof. Narayan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the Regional Engineering College, Tiruchirapalli and an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur. He has also completed the Advanced Management Program at IFAP Rome, Italy. He is currently pursuing his PhD in finance at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Dr. S Raghunath is a Professor of Corporate Strategy and Policy and served as the Chairperson of the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning from 2001 to 2003. Dr.Raghunath spent the winter academic terms in1993-1995 in UK researching the business growth support programmes for small and medium enterprises through the British Council Higher Education Link Programme. On the basis of this study he designed and offered the Action Programme for Business Growth of Small Medium Enterprises along with British Council Visiting Professor Douglas Stoddart and the Going International Programme for Owner Managers of small and medium enterprises. He collaborated with faculty members from Babson College, USA in offering an executive education programme to family based firms on managing the next level of growth through trans generational entrepreneurship.

Dr. Raghunath serves as an independent director on the board of National Venture Capital Fund, K Two Technologies and India Satcom. He worked with Ernst and Young team in setting up the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in India. He has written cases and papers on topics that include managerial challenges of owner managers for growing their enterprises and pay off and pitfalls of inorganic growth through joint ventures and acquisitions and the transition challenges of trans generational family based businesses. He is also a coach to business owners and their management teams on formulating and implementing business growth plans and offers trans generation transition and strategy consultations to family firms.

Rishikesha T Krishnan is a Professor in the Corporate Strategy & Policy Area & Jamuna Raghavan Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), India. His research interests are in the areas of strategy, innovation and competitiveness.

Prof. Krishnan has been a consultant to, or conducted management development programs for, British Telecom, Daimler Chrysler, Wipro, Siemens, Sasken Communication Technologies, the Murugappa Group, the Aditya Birla Group, Kochi Refineries and the Governments of India and Karnataka.

Prof. Krishnan worked for four years as the General Manager of a small high technology company in the telecom sector from 1987-91. During this period, he also co-founded a software company working on specialized engineering application software. From March 2001 to October 2001, he worked with a software product start-up in the knowledge management space founded by an IIMB alumnus.

Prof. Krishnan holds a M.Sc. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur; an M.S. in Engineering-Economic Systems (now Management Science & Engineering) from Stanford University; and a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, where his thesis proposal won the outstanding thesis proposal award instituted by the Industrial Finance Corporation of India.

Prof. Krishnan has been a member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Panel on Intellectual Property, R&D, Technology and Innovation, the Advisory Council of CII’s National Innovation Mission and on the jury of Nasscom’s innovation awards. He has been a member of government committees to review the performance of the National Innovation Foundation, and to study “The Future of Aviation and Aeronautics in India.” He has done external reviews of the plan schemes of India’s Department of Scientific & Industrial Research and the Department of Biotechnology’s SBIRI scheme.

Seshadri D. V. R. is a visiting faculty at IIM Bangalore in the marketing area. Seshadri’s areas of interest are: Business-to-business Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Corporate Entrepreneurship. He has over 15 years of industrial experience including a five-year stint at Madras Refineries Limited. Prior to joining the Institute, he spent seven years as the Managing Director of a world- class Compact Disc manufacturing facility. He teaches extensively in the various long-term programs at IIM Bangalore. as well as in various executive education programs for companies such as L&T, Areva, Siemens, TCS, Infosys, Murugappa Group, Tata Steel, SKF, etc. He also teaches B2B Marketing in the PGPX program (Executive MBA) at IIM Ahmedabad.

He holds a B. Tech. (Mechanical Engineering) from IIT, Madras, M.S. (Engineering Sciences) from University of California and a Fellow title (Doctorate) from IIM Ahmedabad. He has authored over a dozen articles in refereed journals, developed over 70 case studies in his areas of interest, and recently co-authored a book, ‘Innovation Management’ with Prof. Shlomo Maital, Israel, published by Sage (India).

Sourav Mukherji is Associate Professor the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, who teaches post graduate and doctoral level courses on Organization Design, Strategy Process, Organization Learning and Knowledge Management. Prior to joining IIM Bangalore as a faculty member, Sourav worked for the Boston Consulting Group as a strategy consultant, where he was involved in assignments concerning portfolio analysis, organization design, merger and acquisitions and market entry strategies for Indian and international firms . After completing his engineering, Sourav had worked with information technology firms like IBM and Oracle in various product management functions. As a doctoral student at IIM Bangalore he won the ‘Infosys Fellowship’, awarded for research in the IT industry.

An engineer from IIT Kharagpur, Sourav obtained his doctorate from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. His major research interests are strategic and structural challenges faced by Indian firms competing in global markets. Sourav is among the board of advisors of an entrepreneurial venture in the information technology services sector. Sourav has recently been provided a research fellowship by UNDP for their “Growing Inclusive Market” initiative.

Suresh Bhagavatula is a Full time Visiting Faculty at the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. His research interests are in entrepreneurship with a special focus on social capital and its influence on opportunity recognition and resource mobilization. He is also interested in understanding the influence of informal networks within organizations and interlocking of corporate directorates. At IIM, he has taught graduate and PhD level courses on Social Network Analysis and New Venture Creation. He is the course coordinator for the one year Management Program for Entrepreneurs and Family Businesses.

A publication he co-authored is due to appear in the Journal of Business Venturing, a highly rated journal in entrepreneurship. His articles have appeared in IIMB Management Review, BusinessGyan, and AT Forum. He has presented papers at refereed conferences like Babson Kaufmann Entrepreneurship Research Conference, Sunbelt Social Networks conference, and The Strategic Management Society Conference.

Over the last fifteen years he has been involved in various short term consultancy projects in organizational network analysis, and livelihood development for organizations such as L&T Infotech, Apollo Health Street, Basix, DFID and ILO.

R. Vaidyanathan is a Professor in the Finance & Control area of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB). He was the Chairperson of the MBA programme [1992-1995] and founder Chairperson of the Centre for Insurance Research and Education [CIRE] at IIMB. He was a Visiting Faculty at the International Center for Banking and Financial Services at Manchester Business School and was a Fellow of Salzburg Seminar at Austria. He was a visiting Professor of Finance at the Faculty of Management at the University of Mauritius. He was a visiting Fulbright Scholar in Corporate Finance at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaigne USA and has studied the credit rating mechanisms of major agencies like S&P, Moody’s etc. He was also a visiting Fulbright Fellow at the Georgia State University at Atlanta and International Insurance Foundation at Washington D. C. during 2003 and studied the Pension Systems in the USA. He has published extensively about the role of Unincorporated Sector in the Indian economy. He has been a consultant to various organizations such as HLL, LIC, ITC, BPL, and a number of Banks.

R Vaidyanathan is a graduate of the Loyola College, Madras and a Masters from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta he obtained his Fellow in Management (Doctorate) from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta where he also taught for four years. He has published a number of articles in India and abroad on Corporate Finance and Capital Markets.

Vasanthi Srinivasan is an Associate Professor in the Organizational Behaviour & Human Resources Management area of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB). Her research interests are in the field of Career and Performance Management, International Human Resource Management and Women Professional in the Technology sector. Prior to joining IIMB, she worked at Wipro Limited and The P & P Group, a Bangalore based consulting organization. She was also Visiting Professor at the Management Development Institute, Gurgaon. Her consulting assignments have been in the field of leadership development and building capability of Human resource professionals. Another continuing area of interest is Corporate Social Performance and the study and development of a theoretical methodology for Indian businesses. She has engaged in social audits of businesses in India and has done work on ethical codes of conduct and labour standards.

Vasanthi holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Personal Management and Industrial Relations from XLRI Jamshedpur, and a Fellow in Management from IIMB.