Prof G Raghuram, a Distinguished Visiting Faculty and Principal Academic Advisor of the National Rail and Transportation Institute (NRTI), a university promoted by the Indian Ministry of Railways, and former Director IIM Bangalore.

He holds degree in B.Tech. from IIT, Madras, a Post Graduate in Management from IIM, Ahmedabad and a Ph.D. from North western University, USA. Prof Raghuram specializes in infrastructure and transport systems, logistics and supply chain management. He conducts research on the railway, port, shipping, aviation and road sectors. He has been part of various government policy-making and advisory committees. Prof Raghuram, in addition to his current role as a Principal Academic Advisor and Distinguished Visiting Faculty at NRTI, is also Professor (Emeritus) at the Gujarat Maritime University.

He has been Director, IIM Bangalore, from February 2017 to July 2020. Earlier, he was Professor and Chairperson of the Public Systems Group at IIMA. He has been Dean (Faculty), IIMA, Vice-Chancellor of the Indian Maritime University and Indian Railways Chair Professor.

Prof Raghuram has published over 35 refereed papers in journals and written over 160 case studies. He has published six co-authored books. He has teaching experience at universities in India, the USA, Canada, Yugoslavia, Singapore, Tanzania, UAE and Japan. He was a member of the Global Future Council on Mobility of the World Economic Forum.

Prof. S. Ganesan has more than three decades of very active academic, research, consultancy, and administrative experience. He has guided 35 Ph.D. scholars leading to conferment of Doctoral Degrees in Commerce / Management. Prof. Ganesan, whose specialisations are Finance and Entrepreneurship, is well experience in curriculum development, and conducting Faculty Development Programmes.

One international seminar, many national level seminars & workshops, three UGC-sponsored Refresher Courses for Management Faculty, and several other programmes have been organised & conducted by Prof. Ganesan. Six books and more than 50 research papers stand to his credit. He has participated and presented papers in several international seminars. Prof. Ganesan has successfully completed one major research project, two development projects, three consultancy assignments, and one minor research project. As the Head of Education Initiatives in LSC, he led launching of apprenticeship-based degree programmes in 50 locations all over the country.

Radha Mohan Gupta, a supply chain professional with 30 years of track record of designing & managing supply chains across FMCG, Food & Beverages, and Consumer Durables sectors. Specialist in logistics, procurement, strategic sourcing, gross margin improvements, vendor management, third-party manufacturing management, supply planning & distribution, transportation & warehouse management, and net working capital management.

Sindhu Bhattacharya writes on the economy, business, and people driving these businesses. She's been doing this in various media formats for 27 years. Worked across all possible genres - news agency, daily newspaper, weekly magazine, business daily, and TV. She does some digital journalism and newspaper feature stories and occasional radio shows.

Managing Employee Motivational the Bottom of the Pyramid Vandana Laddha, Director - Driver Management and Fleet Operations at Shivani Carriers Pvt. Ltd., cleared her desk for the day and took a deep sigh. It was another day filled with a litany of complaints from her drivers, mostly centered around their compensation. For the last few weeks, she had been nagged with worries about the effectiveness of the driver management system, which had been implemented under her leadership over the last year. She knew that discontent was brewing among drivers, especially, since the modification of the special incentive scheme, which was designed to boost productivity, seemed to be the sore point. She had been thinking about what could be done to keep the truck drivers motivated. Vandana Laddha (hereafter referred to as Vandana) felt it was time to discuss some of her ideas with Hemant Laddha, the managing director of the firm. Hemant was in a meeting with a client in his adjoining office. As she waited for him, her thoughts drifted to the challenging evolution that the company had gone through in the past few years.

A whole time teacher designated as Training & Placement officer in the professor grade, heads university placement cell which is a centralised office to look after the training and placement of the students of various courses in jamia.

As a teacher, I teach management to various courses like MBA, MIB, B.Tech, B.Arch etc. As a researcher, my research area is Corporate Social Responsibility.

With the belief that skill development must be an integral part of broader employment and development strategies I embarked on my "Tryst with destiny" with a long dedicated in-depth research on the vocational training system in India. The curiosity to put my years of theory to practice got me involved with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which has the industry’s mandate in raising the employability quotient of the country in partnership with Government.

At CII, the learnings were immense as I got the unique privilege of being a part of key historical moments like crafting the first ever National Policy on Skill Development. While the private sector was preparing to participate in the national skill development system, the government and civil society were being nurtured to accept all stakeholders thus creating a consultative and mature skill development landscape in the country.

In the decade long involvement, I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to dovetail the corridors of decision makers; industry stalwarts and international partners with the on ground human side of the implementation process. My efforts have always been directed to effectively move from policy to action and create long standing impact. Today, I call myself a social development enthusiast and a citizen of the world as I work to nurture and develop policy frameworks across the world. I strongly believe that the world of reform has no language and barriers as it cuts across all societies and economies. The only legitimate language should be a symbiotic understanding between the private sector, government and civil society. The world has much to gain when both demand and supply acknowledge each other’s strengths.

Aman earned his Ph.D. in Management and Labour Studies (Ecological and Institutional Economics) and M.Phil in Management and Labour Studies (Organised and Unorganised Retail Sector) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai). He has around 11 years of experience in business, civil society, and academia. His expertise includes –

• a. Designing, executing, and analyzing projects and programs in settings like a for-profit, non-profit and academic.
• b. Experience in FMCG; Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology; Operational Services; Advertising and Branding; Civil Society Foundations; and Academia.
• c. Teaching (Operations Management; Research Methodology – Quantitative and Qualitative; Business Statistics and Analytics)

Aman’s top skills include – diagnostic and designing intervention programs; qualitative-quantitative analysis and interpretation of linkages between functions, hierarchies, and clusters; project management; monitoring and evaluation; content creation and publication; database management; hosting and designing websites; CSR planning and feasibility studies; sales; organising and conducting training, workshop, seminar, conference and long certificate programs.

He has published empirical papers on business, ecology and ecosystemic studies. Aman has been awarded prestigious fellowships like Max Planck Institute Fellowship (Germany); Indian Council of Social Science Research (India); and Judge at ‘The Undergraduate Awards – 2018’ (Ireland). He was the program director of two national level conferences at Tata Institute of Social Sciences; and two summer/winter school on ‘organisation development, change and leadership in civil society organisations in India’. Aman is capable of understanding organisational (ecosystemic) issues and designing the best intervention and change projects.

Sachin Haritash is the Founder of Mavyn. He is in-charge of expanding organisation’s footprint in India by steering the conceptualization and execution of key strategies related to management and operational needs of the company. Sachin has been an active proponent in bringing significant expansion of Mavyn and is therefore responsible for planning strategic growth of the company.

Assiduous in nature, he has worked his way through all levels in the parent company - Chetak Logistics, where he joined as an executive. His knowledge of transportation and logistics industry coupled with his perseverance and innovative approach enabled him to set higher standards for Mavyn.

With his multi-faceted skill set, Sachin strives to establish Mavyn as a complete digitized trucking platform providing a reliable and cost-effective solution to transport goods in India.

Sachin is an alumnus of NMIMS, Mumbai and Sri Venkateshwara College, Delhi University. He likes to drive car, global politics & reading.

Arun Arora is a Mechanical Engineer (Major Operations Research), MBA (Marketing), Post Graduate in Journalism, with additional qualification in Hotel Management. He has rich experience of over 30 years in diverse sectors like Automobiles, Infrastructure, Airport, Steel, Power, Mining, Hospitality, Oil & Gas and CSR.

He has expertise in the area of developing Strategy, Marketing Communication Plan, Advocacy, Corporate Affairs, Reputation and Stakeholder Management, Media, Branding, Advertising, Change Management and Crisis Communications.

Arun has been associated with and contributed to the organisations featuring among top brands (Maruti Suzuki, GMR, JSPL, GVK, Cairn Oil & Gas and Vedanta) in brand reputation and market value ranking as part of senior management.

Recipient of various credible ratings and awards, Arun was adjudged the Power Brand Hall of Fame, ‘Most Dynamic Corporate Communication Professional’ (2011), Indian PR Icon (2013), inducted in PR Hall of Fame by PRCI in 2015 and ranked amongst top ten corporate communications professions in India (Reputation Today) in 2016. Listed among top 100 PR professionals in Reputation Today Listing, 2017. He was felicitated by Indira University, Pune in 2019. He is also invited as a key note speaker and jury to various forums and credible corporate awards.

Arun is a Mentor to ‘Be-arsty’, a for-profit social enterprise https://be-artsy.com/

He is on the Advisory Board of ‘Ideahive’, a cause driven media campaign start-up.http://ideahive.in/index.html