HIS NET WORTH WAS HIS NETWORK
HAILING FROM A village near Pudukottai, Bala obtained his post-graduate degree in Statistics/Mathematics from Annamalai University, served as a non-commissioned officer in the Indian Army for a couple of years and later taught at the Annamalai University. A meeting with Prof Landis Gephart of the Dayton University, USA, helped him pursue higher education in the US. His brilliance, shot him up as a distinguished professor of accounting, a stature not attained by many Indian academics.
LIBERALISATION THAT OPENED UP BALA TOO!
Bala was alert in taking initiatives suited to evolving opportunities. When India opened up in the 1990s he persuaded his Kelloggs School of Management to organise, with the help UNDP, a massive India Business Conference to apprise large American corporations on the opportunities offered by India. Ford, Motorola and Kelloggs, quickly decided on large investments in India. He also organised a National Management Programme at the Management Development Institute, Gurgaon for senior officials of Government of India on vital lessons on attracting and managing American investors.
This experience was invaluable in working along with McKinsey’s Rajat Gupta (his neighbour at the Lake Area, Chicago) to involve large business schools of the USA and the business leaders of India like Ratan Tata, Ambanis, Adi Godrej, Jamshyd Godrej, Rahul Bajaj… to set up the Indian School of Business (ISB) at Hyderabad.
THE ALERT CHANDRABABU…
Bala hailed from a humble middle-class background but reached great heights by his sheer brilliance, articulation, abundance of knowledge on native issues and humour. Look at this experience of a high power team that included Rajat Gupta, Anand Mahindra and other business leaders and Bala set out to select the location for the Indian School of Business. The suitors included Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Listen to Bala: “Chennai offered large land area in Sriperumbudur at 50 per cent concessional rate at Rs 6 lakh an acre. A senior government official handed exquisite garlands requesting the team members to greet the then chief minister Karunanidhi with these.
“Our next halt was Hyderabad. Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu received the team at the airport, and garlanded the members, 200 acres of land and offered it. “The team announced the selection of Hyderabad the same evening.”
The ISB was set up with the involvement of three famous business schools – Wharton and Kellogg’s from the USA and the London Business School. ISB received huge support from international and national institutions. Bala was the first dean of the management programme at ISB and contributed richly to its flying start.
GREAT IDEA ON GREAT LAKES
This experience led him to conceive an even bolder project – a management school in Chennai. Bala used to say his net worth is his network. He made excellent use of his contacts with academics and the legion of his students to set up the Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM). True to his middle-class mooring, he offered the courses at fees affordable by much vaster sections. The one-year MBA course was an instant success thanks to his ability to involve his vast network of academics. These included renowned academics like Dr Seenu Srinivasan (Stanford), Dr Philip Kotler (Kellogg School of Management), Dr Shyam Sunder (Yale University), Dr V S Arunachalam (Carnegie Mellon) and Dr Srikant Datar (Harvard University). Several professors of Indian origin readily agreed to combine their visits to India on their sabbatical to teach at GLIM.
Bala utilised such contacts to offer dual degree courses with reputed American and European universities.
The sprawling 27-acre campus of GLIM at Manamai village in Chengalpattu is the monumental contribution of Bala who dared to dream big and had the capability to realise it in his lifetime.
