Chinese MBA Edu Model, Teaching Excellence, Entrepreneurship & BBA Education Approaches: MBAUniverse.com Interview with Prof Rama Velamuri, Dean, School of Management, Mahindra University

Prof S Ramakrishna (Rama) Velamuri is Professor and Dean of newly formed School of Management at Mahindra University Hyderabad. He is a well respected global authority on Entrepreneurship Education. Prof Velamuri previously taught for thirteen and a half years at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Shanghai, where he was the Chengwei Ventures Professor of Entrepreneurship, and four years at IESE Business School, Barcelona. He received his PhD from the Darden School at the University of Virginia, MBA from IESE Business School and BCom from the University of Madras. He has conducted executive training for senior managers of Henkel, Michelin, Bosch, Tencent, China Development Bank, SASAC (the holding company of all central PSUs in China), among many other companies. Prof Velamuri’s research has been published in top journals such as Harvard Business Review Online, California Management Review, Journal of Management Studies among others. His research has received more than 3,800 Google Scholar citations and his 2010 article in Long Range Planning on business model innovation is among the five most cited on the topic.

On April 26^th, Mahindra University announced that prestigious Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business has become an Academic Partner. To explore many facets of Dr Velamuri’s rich experience, MBAUniverse.com conducted an indepth interview. Edited excerpts follow.

Q: You served as the full-time faculty of CEIBS for 13 long years? CEIBS is one of the top B-schools in the World. What prompted you to return to India, and join Mahindra University Hyderabad?
A: Yes, I had an excellent stint at CEIBS – visionary leadership, great colleagues, excellent students and alumni and a school that seems to be scaling new heights all the time. Covid19 was the trigger for my return. After nearly 37 years living outside India during which my visits home ranged from one to three weeks, I was forced to spend a whole year in India because of travel restrictions, which allowed me to interact much more closely with immediate and extended family and friends. My wife and I have been thinking for several years about coming back to India to settle down and these thoughts started crystallizing in our minds a few months ago. When the opportunity to become Dean of the new School of Management at Mahindra University came up, we felt it was now or never.

Q: So was it a tough decision…What factors persuaded you to leave a top global B-school to be part of a start-up!
A: There were several factors that contributed to my decision: i) the fact that the university has been set up by the Mahindra Group, which has a reputation of being professionally managed; ii) the track record of the engineering school, which was originally affiliated to the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, and for which the group partnered with Ecole Centrale of Paris, iii) the research profile of the engineering school faculty, which indicated that the leadership wanted to differentiate itself based on research, iv) my interactions with the Vice Chancellor Prof. Yaj Medury and the board members of Mahindra University, who made it clear that they wanted to set up an academic institution of repute, and v) the advanced discussions, led by Prof. Medury, for Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business to become Mahindra University’s academic partner, when we began talking about me taking the Dean position (the agreement with Cornell has now been signed and we have just made a press release to announce it). The Hyderabad location was also an attraction; at a professional level, it is exciting to work in a city that is a major education and high-technology hub, and at a personal level, my wife and I have a huge family and friends network here.

Q: Have you joined as the Dean of the School of Management, Mahindra University Hyderabad, and relocating to Hyderabad?
A: Yes, I have joined as of March 1^st, 2021.We have already relocated to Hyderabad.

Q: How will you compare MBA education in China and India? While MBA in China started in 1990s and in India in 1950s, they are far ahead on International Rankings, Accreditation etc? How did China leapfrog…
A: The Chinese were late starters when it comes to business education. CEIBS was the first business school to offer an MBA, in 1994. However, like everything else that they do, the Chinese are relentless in their pursuit of continuous improvement through benchmarking with the best in the world. For example, even the business schools located at public universities are encouraged to get accredited by international agencies such as AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA. They have invested in hiring young Chinese faculty who got their PhDs from North America, Europe and South East Asia with a view to improving their research output. The government has programs to attract foreign and Chinese nationals through their “Foreign Expert” and “1,000 Talents” programs. My status in China was that of “Foreign Expert” and for the first three years of my stay there, I enjoyed attractive benefits provided by the government. The faculty at leading business schools, public and private, are heavily incentivized to publish and regularly publish in leading journals, such as the UT Dallas journals, FT50 journals or the ABDC A* journals. Universities regularly invite the leading international scholars to visit China during the summer months, teach a doctoral course, and then select one or two bright young Chinese doctoral students to work with them. When it comes to teaching, all the top Chinese universities run joint programs with the top universities in North America and Europe, such as Harvard, Kellogg, Washington University and INSEAD. This gives their faculty and staff members opportunities to interact with their counterparts in these leading schools and learn from them.

Q: What can India learn from China to improve our management education?
A: In India, we are often not aware of how far behind we are with respect to the standards of excellence in our fields, whether it is road construction, train infrastructure building, engineering, or indeed education. To overcome this problem, we need to expose ourselves to the highest standards of excellence in our field. Once we get this exposure, we can understand the gap that exists between us and the best in the world. We then need to put in place a plan that will continuously narrow this gap. Of course, we should not blindly follow what others consider to be best practices but make our own judgments based on our own circumstances and priorities. CEIBS has been running a China CEO program for 20 years in partnership with Harvard Business School and IESE Business School and a Global CEO program for 10 years with the Wharton School and IESE Business School (I was the Academic Director of this latter program for the first couple of years).It is in this context that I am excited about our agreement with Cornell’s SC Johnson School of Business. To summarize, the most important first step for us is to understand the gap that separates us from the best in the world. In India, we often lacked this understanding in the past. After the 1991 reforms, many of our manufacturing and services sectors have become internationally benchmarked, but education until now has been relatively insulated, because of heavy regulation. Hopefully, the New Education Policy (NEP) can be a harbinger of change.I am totally convinced that India can become one of the most important education hubs in the world, providing the highest quality of education at a very affordable cost.

Q: Based on your faculty experiences at CEIBS and IESE, what are the building blocks of a great B-school?
A: The building blocks of any academic institution are very straightforward and are very well known – i) excellence in knowledge dissemination (teaching), which depends on the quality of the faculty and the academic rigor and industry alignment of the curriculum. Teaching excellence benefits not only the students but also the organizations that hire them, and ii) excellence in knowledge creation (research), which ensures that you are respected by other leading academic institutions, which in turn will lead toa constant flow of top faculty talent to your institution. At the start up stage, academic institutions should not be obsessed about scale and should focus on quality rather than quantity. At Mahindra University’s School of Management, we are focused on both teaching and research excellence. We also want to start our three degrees – BA in Economics and Finance, BBA in Digital Technologies and BBA in Computational Business Analytics, which we will offer in partnership with our sister school, the School of Engineering – in 2021-2022 with small class sizes of 30 students each.

Q: Till about a decade back, IIMs and other top Indian B-schools were very focussed on teaching excellence. Then, to meet the global rankings and accreditation criteria, research and publications became more important. Today, how important is teaching excellence? And how can Indian B-schools rebalance the priorities?
A: This is a very pertinent question. In North America, the leading universities are so focused on research that hiring and promotion decisions are almost entirely based on the research output of faculty members, with very low weightage given to teaching excellence. This has led to two unfortunate consequences: i) in many institutions, teaching has been relegated to an activity that is considered a “necessary evil” or a chore, and ii) business school research, in its pursuit of rigor, has become so esoteric that hardly anyone reads it (not even fellow academics). In India, we should be careful not to fall into this trap. We should encourage research that is rigorous yet relevant, i.e., i) meaningful for India and addresses our country’s challenges, and ii) is aligned with what practitioners – managers, entrepreneurs, and policy makers – care about. 

Q: You are one of the top global faculty on entrepreneurship. China has some amazing entrepreneurs like Jack Ma. India has a strong family business legacy and now a booming start-up ecosystem. How can B-schools nurture entrepreneurs on campus?
A: Entrepreneurial ventures go through multiple stages. At the seed stage, they need to be imbued with the entrepreneurial mindset and learn entrepreneurial tools and frameworks because they need to ensure their survival. Therefore, entrepreneurs need to learn how to operate under conditions of extreme uncertainty, lack of structure and resource scarcity. Thirty years ago, business schools had little to say to entrepreneurs on how to navigate this seed stage because most of the tools and frameworks they taught were more relevant for mid-sized and large companies. Over the past three decades, business school faculty have developed a number of tools and frameworks to help entrepreneurs at the seed stage. Nowadays, all the top business schools have at least one core course in Entrepreneurship. Further, approximately 25% of the electives in the top MBA programs are related to entrepreneurship. When it comes to the growth stage of ventures, which involves building an organization with the requisite systems and processes, business schools have a lot to say, because at this stage entrepreneurs need managerial skills and capabilities. This means that they need a solid foundation in accounting, finance, decision theory, organizational behaviour, human resource management, marketing, operations and strategy. At IESE and CEIBS, I taught on a number of non-degree executive education programs on entrepreneurship and innovation for very large organizations such as Henkel, Evonik, Telefonica, Grupo Santander, Bosch, Roche, etc. These large organizations are also keen to learn how to nurture entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial mindset.

Q: So, can B-schools be the platform for creating next big start-ups and Unicorns?
A: Of course. Naveen Tiwari (InMobi), Dhiraj Rajaram (MuSigma), Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Naukri), Deep Kalra (MakemyTrip), Vipul Parekh (Big Basket), Karan Bhagat (IIFL), Vikram Vuppala (Nephroplus), Vivek Pahwa (Accentium), Sandeep Gudibanda (Healthplix), all went to business school. There are hundreds of others.

Q: One last question before we switch to Mahindra University. Was it tough to be accepted by Chinese faculty and students?
A: Not at all. I enjoyed a wonderful relationship with my faculty colleagues. Most of them got their PhDs in North America, and had already worked with faculty and students of Indian origin. They hold Indian academics in the highest regard. When it comes to students, like any highly ranked business school that attracts academically gifted students, the expectations of the CEIBS students are very high. The Chinese appreciate knowledgeable professors and treat them with great respect. My wife and I enjoyed a special status in China because we are both teachers.

Q: What is your Vision for the School of Management at Mahindra University Hyderabad?
A: On the one hand, we would like our graduates to be industry ready. On the other, we would like to create a foundation of lifelong learning for our students such that they not only become ethical, entrepreneurial, conscientious, highly competent and socially conscious employees in the organizations they choose to work in, but can learn and upgrade themselves continuously to keep pace with rapid change.

Q: MBA education is quite a cluttered space in India, which 20+ IIMs, ISB, IIT SoM, XLRI, SPJIMR, MDI... How do you look at the space…
A: By 2050, India’s GDP is expected to be five times as large as it is today. We will need a huge number of highly qualified managers to lead organizations in this huge economy. The schools that you have mentioned are no doubt excellent, and I know several of them well, but we will need at least another 50 high quality business schools. In spite of having 3,000+ business schools in India, there is a scarcity of quality business schools.

Q: What will be the unique differentiators of Mahindra University’s School of Management?
A: As I mentioned, we start with some strengths: i) the Mahindra Group’s brand image, ii) the engineering school’s track record, iii) Cornell’s SC Johnson School of Business as academic partner, which will help us with strong curricula and course structures, visiting professors from Cornell and student immersions at their campus in Ithaca, NY, iv) our beautiful, green 100+ acre campus, and v) our location in Hyderabad, which is not only an educational and high-tech hub, but is one of the nicest cities in India to live in.

We will seek to build our reputation by getting the basics right: i) admitting hardworking students with a strong desire to learn, ii) recruiting faculty with strong research capabilities that can publish in FT50, ABDC A* and A journals, and iii) carefully designing our program curriculum with the Cornell team. Being a multidisciplinary university, we will offer our students electives in other schools such as engineering (they can learn AI, machine learning, and data analytics from both computer science and management professors). Finally, we will think carefully about leveraging technology to offer an optimal blended learning experience (online and offline) to our students.

Q: What programs will the School of Management at Mahindra University offer?
A: To begin with, we will offer the BA Economics and Finance and the BBA (with two concentrations, one in Digital Technologies and one in Computational Business Analytics). In year two or three, we will launch our MBA program. We plan to offer a PhD starting 2022.

Q: Are you starting MBA in 2021? Please share details like seats, fee etc?
A: We will offer the MBA program in 2022 or 2023. We will start with a small batch of BA (Economics and Finance) and BBA in August 2021. As of now, we are planning to admit 90 students in the first year. Fees (excluding accommodation, food and international immersion) will be INR 2.5 lacs per year for the BA and INR 3 lacs for the BBA.

Q: Interesting that you are starting with undergraduate management education (BBA), and not MBA. Three IIMs (Ranchi, Jammu, Bodh Gaya) too are starting BBA + MBA programs this year. In your view, how should BBA program be designed differently from MBA – from student selection, to learning goals to expected outcomes...
A: Considering that students will be 18 years old when they join, our plan is to have some foundation courses such as Introduction to Critical Thinking, Communication Skills, Academic Writing, etc. We will then have courses in the functional areas such as Economics, Finance, Accounting, Marketing, OBHR, Operations and Strategy. Courses that emphasize the digital economy, such as digital marketing, web analytics, and data visualization will be offered. Considering that we are part of a university that has a strong engineering school, we will offer courses on Machine Learning, Data Analytics etc to our BBA students. In consultation with industry, we are defining a very specific set of digital skills and competencies that they will graduate with. We will prepare our students for entry level positions in consulting, IT and ITES, data analytics, financial services, banking, and manufacturing firms. The rigorous grounding that we provide in the above subjects will also prepare them for further studies, be they Masters degrees or professional qualifications such as CFA, CA or CMA.

Q: Finally, what is your message to student community…
A: We are looking for hardworking youngsters who want to do either a BA in Economics and Finance or a BBA. We look forward to recruiting a small but high-quality founding batch. We will work hard to ensure an outstanding learning experience for you. Please register and apply on our website.

Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on Mahindra University