The NSRCEL is however is managed by three eminent personalities –
Prof Kumar K Chairperson
Suresh Bhagavatula Faculty
Suryanarayanan A Chief Operating Officer
Prof K Kumar
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. You can reach him at kumark@iimb.ernet.in
Suresh Bhagavatula
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.
He started his career in the field of mineral processing, as a Project Engineer in Tata Research Design and Development Centre, a Research Division within Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Pune. The work at TCS included both fundamental and applied surface-chemistry research within the mineral flotation domain. Subsequently, he pursued a Master’s degree in Appropriate Technology from Flensburg University, Germany. Here, he was a coordinator for Small Enterprise Development at the Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Visakhapatnam for three years before starting a Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship from Vrije University, Amsterdam. While pursuing the research work, he was involved in setting up two enterprises, one, a handicraft export unit to promote crafts from Andhra Pradesh and two, a travel company that conducts alternative tours for Dutch nationals across South India.
Suresh Bhagavatula is a co-founder of the HeadStart foundation (www.headstart.in) that aims towards building an ecosystem to support entrepreneurship in India. The foundation runs an annual program to identify cutting edge innovations from India through its monthly and annual events such as Startup Saturday (www.startupsaturday.in), which are conducted across multiple cities in India. He can be reached at suresh.bhagavatula@iimb.ernet.in
Suryanarayanan A
A. Suryanarayanan (Surya) has over 28 years of professional experience, both as a corporate executive and entrepreneur. After spending the initial years in the finance function at Union Carbide and Nicholas laboratories, he joined a family run pharma start up company, Recon and served as its Group Finance Director. His stint as a serial entrepreneur started in 2000 and since then he has successfully founded, funded and exited healthcare ventures including MedyBiz, a disease management company and LifeKen, an organized pharmacy retail chain. Surya is a Chartered Accountant by qualification, and is an alumnus of the International Masters Program in Management of IIMB. He is the Chief Operating Officer at the NSRCEL. His leadership creates a great impact in the area of entrepreneurship and innovation. He can be reached at surya.a@iimb.ernet.in