Zoom on Zoom-An Award to a Distinguished Alum

 Good things do happen to nice people. Kusum, better known as Zoom, was a livewire we had who fought for Women's Rights- to be allowed to move in to the Bilekahalli campus on Bannerghatta road. way back in 1982, along with us- the boys. She won, and they moved, to our delight. She made her presence felt, in every way, and was one of the most liked-girl or guy- in the batch. She recently won the Distinguished Alum award from IIMB, not a surprise at all. She is a professor of marketing at Tuck, Dartmouth for the past many years. Some pics from the event held online due to Corona pandemic.. 

Some other winners, first.. many have gone into social causes with entrepreneurship or support of various kinds..heartening to know.

Revathy Ashok, among other things, runs a political incubator with a 9-month flagship program to train people for public service.Sameer Nair, below, runs Gram OOrja, to provide electricity to rural areas which never had it-while keeping it commercially viable!

Laxmana Rao has done wonders for manufacturing in India, with advanced toolrooms, building robots, and IML (in-mould labeling) for FMCG, pharma industries, among other innovations, with many manufacturing plants.

Ramesh 'Hassled' Srinivasan is also a classmate, and a past winner of the award. Gopal Mahapatra is currently with IIMB as  professor of practice, and is a classmate too- he got his FPM from Bangalore, was with us in the first two years. He also worked with me at Indore more recently.

Here is Kusum, remembering her profs., and friends, and the anda bhurji she was famous for making in our mess.

She was awarded a bit late due to Cornoa-strike last year. 

DD Saxena is a pioneer-entrepreneur in Australia, and from an earlier decade at IIMB, when they operated from the city. He also battled cancer and won, and runs multiple ventures. He recounted his days at Hindustan Lever, Thapar and a gherkin export venture he set up, which has grown in scale.

GBSN Conference at Delhi

IMT Ghaziabad is the co-host of the Global Business School Network ( a non-profit orgn) conference, held in India for the first time. Today was pretty good,  starting with some introductory remarks by the guests, Analjit Singh of the Max group and Mr. Kamal Nath. Followed by some good sessions about challenges facing B schools. Africa has less than 100 Business schools, was a major discovery, against 4000 or so in India.

We had an interesting session for Deans/Directors where we enumerated challenges facing B Schools, and how they might contribute to economic development. Met some academics from South and North Carolina where I spent around 5 years.

There was a very interesting dinner meet with a presentation by Aparajita from Bill and Melida Gates Foundation on the subject of an intervention on AIDS control among Indian sex workers and other target groups. The role of management, and of the Indian govt. were both lauded by the presenter. We had a nice chat. Also met a Dartmouth MBA student who might be taught by Kusum Ailawadi, a batchmate who is a faculty member there. The Dartmouth team did a social project about building a 300 dollar house in Haiti, and won a prize from GBSN for it.

Tomorrow is the last day of the formal sessions, and I am looking forward to it.