IIMK Conferences

Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani
Hon'ble Union Minister, MHRD, GoI

Ms. Smriti Zubin Irani is the Union Minister for Human Resource Development since 27th May, 2014. She was elected to Rajya Sabha in August 2011. She also serves as a member of the Committee on Coal and Steel. Ms. Irani has been an accomplished actress in her professional career and she was awarded Best Actress of the Year consecutively for seven years by the Indian Television Academy.

Mr. Guillaume SICARD
President, Nissan India Operations, Nissan Motor India Pvt. Ltd.

Mr. Guillaume Sicard is the President of Nissan India Operations. Prior to this, he was the Deputy President at Nissan Motor India Pvt. Ltd. Mr. Sicard joined Renault in 1992 and has held several leadership positions in sales and marketing, with increasing responsibilities, in France, Spain and South Africa.

Prof. Kulbhushan Balooni
Director, IIM Kozhikode

At IIMK, Professor Kulbhushan Baloonihas been undertaking interdisciplinary research on environment, resources, development and policy in South and Southeast Asia. His research has been focusing on: common property, community-based management, conservation, decentralization and local governance, sustainability, and REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus) in the context of climate change mitigation. Professor has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Tokyo, University of Copenhagen, National University of Singapore and Wageningen University. Professor Balooni is also a Fellow of LEAD International and India.

Prof. Rishikesha T. Krishnan
Director, IIM Indore

Professor Rishikesha T. Krishnan is the Director and Professor of Strategic Management at the Indian Institute of Management Indore. From 1996 to 2013, Professor Krishnan was a member of the faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.Professor Krishnan was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania (Fall 2008), and at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad (2011-12). He held the Jamuna Raghavan Chair in Entrepreneurship at IIMB from 2007-10.

Professor Krishnan’s main areas of interest are strategy and innovation. He was listed among the Thinkers50 India most influential thinkers in management from India (2013) and jointly received the special Thinkers50 India Innovation award (2013).

Professor Krishnan writes extensively, and has more than 140 publications spanning outlets that include refereed journals, the popular press, case studies, book chapters, and books.Professor Krishnan’s book From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation: The Challenge for India, published in February 2010 identified the challenges faced by India in enhancing industrial innovation and proposed an agenda to enhance innovation output.

Mr. Santosh Desai
MD and CEO, Future Brands Ltd, Mumbai

Mr. Santosh Desai is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Future Brands India Ltd. Mr. Desai has over two decades of experience in advertising. Previously, he served as the President of McCann-Erickson, India. Mr. Desai’s areas of expertise include Marketing, Branding and Strategic Planning. He served over 21 years in the field of Advertising and has been strategically involved in building key brands for a range of local and multinational clients. Mr. Desai is a columnist with the Times of India and several other publications and has addressed the global management boards of several multinationals, including Hershey’s, Microsoft, Philips, Unilever, Coke etc. He is also the author of the book ‘Mother Pious Lady - Making Sense of Everyday India’. Mr. Desai holds BA (Hons) Economics from M.S. University, Vadodara and is a Post-graduate from IIM Ahmedabad.

Mr. A K Bhattacharya
Editor in Chief, Business Standard

Mr. A K Bhattacharya is the Editor-in-chief of Business Standard. Mr. Bhattacharya is a renowned columnist and writer on policy issues. Prior to Business Standard he had worked for The Economic Times as Chief of Bureau in the late 80 and early 90s.

Prof. Andrew William Mullineux
Deputy Dean (Research), Bournemouth University, UK

ProfessorAndrew Mullineux joined the Business School at Bournemouth University as Professor of Financial Economics and Deputy Dean Research from the University of Birmingham on 1st April 2013. At the University of Birmingham, he became Professor of Money, Banking and Finance in the Department of Economics in the School of Social Sciences in 1997, where he served as Director of the M.Sc and B.Sc. Money, Banking and Finance programmes. He became Deputy Head of the School of Social Sciences (Resources) in 1996 and served as Head of School 1997-2000.

Prof. Ashish Nanda
Director, IIM Ahmedabad

Professor Ashish Nanda is the Director of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Before joining IIMA, Prof. Nanda was Robert Braucher Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School, where he taught in the JD program and was faculty director of Executive Education, faculty director of Case Development Initiative, and research director at Program on the Legal Profession.

Nanda was at Harvard Law School for seven years. Before that, he was a Harvard Business School faculty member for 13 years, where he taught in MBA, DBA, and Executive Education courses. Nanda has a PhD in Business Economics (Harvard), AM in Economics (Harvard), PGDM in Management (IIM Ahmedabad), and B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering (IIT Delhi). Before his PhD, he worked for five years with the Tata group of companies as Tata Administrative Services officer.

He has been a recipient of the Henry B. Arthur Fellowship, the Center in Ethics and the Professions Fellowship, President of India Gold Medal (twice), and the IIMA Director’s Gold Medal, he has published several case studies and Harvard Business Review articles and is a co-author (with Tom DeLong) of Professional Services: Cases & Text.

Prof. John Wilson
Director, Newcastle University Business School, UK

Professor John Wilson is the Director of Newcastle University Business School. He was previously Professor of Strategy at the Management School of University of Liverpool. At the University of Liverpool, Professor Wilson was responsible for teaching activities across the undergraduate and postgraduate curricula as Director of Programmes at the Management School.

Mr. Ravi Kant
Former Vice Chairman and MD of Tata Motors

Mr. Ravi Kant has been the Managing Director and Vice Chairman of Tata Motors Limited. He joined Tata Motors in 1999 and has been associated with Jaguar & Land Rover, Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicles, Korea and Tata Motors, Thailand. Prior to joining Tata Motors Limited, Mr. Ravi Kant was the Director of Phillips India Limited looking after the consumer electronics division. He is the Chairman of TAL Manufacturing Solutions Limited and Tata Advanced Materials Limited and is on the board of Tata Industries. He is also on the governing board of The National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

Mr. Kant studied at Mayo College, Ajmer, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom, from where he completed his Masters in Management in Industry. He was conferred with an Honorary D.Sc. by Aston University in Birmingham in July 2008. He is also an Honorary Industrial Professor at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom.

Prof. Frederique Alexandre - Bailly
Past Dean of Faculty, ESCP

Professor Frédérique Alexandre-Bailly is the former Dean of ESCP Europe Faculty, a post she has been holding since September 2008. She joined the faculty of ESCP Europe in 1998. She teaches human resources management and organizational behaviour. Since 2006 she has been responsible for the inclusion program of the school. Since 2012, she is also vice administrator in charge of teaching affairs and partnerships of the excellence initiative program of heSam University (Hautes Etudes Sorbonne Université), the higher education cluster which ESCP Europe belongs to.

Prof. Debashis Chatterjee
Professor, IIM Lucknow

Prof. Debashis Chatterjee is the former Director of IIMK. He has taught leadership at Harvard University and at IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, and IIM Kozhikode for nearly two decades. He has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship twice for pre-doctoral and postdoctoral work at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He has authored six books, including Timeless Leadership, Leading Consciously and Break Free. Prof. Chatterjee has trained more than 10,000 managers at Fortune 100 corporations globally and has served as a leadership coach to political leaders and CEOs of major Indian organizations. Professor Chatterjee is considered a leading scholar in the field of Asian models of leadership.

Prof. Peter Cappelli
George W Taylor Professor, Wharton Business School, USA

Prof. Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at The Wharton School and the Director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources at University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA, served as Senior Advisor to the Kingdom of Bahrain for Employment Policy from 2003-2005, and since 2007 is a Distinguished Scholar of the Ministry of Manpower for Singapore. His book The India Way: How India’s Top Business Leaders are Revolutionizing Management (with colleagues) describes a mission-driven and employee-focused approach to strategy and competitiveness.

Prof. Kathryn Haynes
Deputy Director, Newcastle University Business School, UK

Professor Kathryn Haynes holds the Northern Society Chair in Accounting & Finance at Newcastle University. Kathryn is a Chartered Accountant and Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). She joined Newcastle University Business School in September 2011, and was Accounting & Finance Subject Group Head for two years before being appointed Deputy Director in September 2013.

Abhishek Bachchan
Actor and Sports Entrepreneur

Mr. Abhishek Bachchan is a Bollywood Actor and owner of the Jaipur Pink Panthers Kabaddi team, which won the inaugural edition of the Indian Pro-Kabaddi league.

Prof. Ramadhar Singh
Distinguished Professor, IIM Bangalore and Consulting editor of Review of General Psychology (American Psychological Association)

Prof. Will Mitchell
J. Rex Fuqua Professor, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University and Co-editor of Strategic Management Journal