<p>Dr. Mohan Kaul</p> Dr Kaul retired in April 2012 as the founding Director General and Chief Executive Officer and later Chairman of the Commonwealth Business Council which was established by the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) in Edinburgh in October 1997. During that period, Commonwealth trade increased to over $4 trillion dollars and investment flows reached over $200 billion with some countries receiving FDIs for the first time. He was responsible for establishing the Commonwealth Business Forum as a part of CHOGM since 1997. Over the past 20 years, he has built an enviable rapport with Presidents and Heads of Governments across continents. He has organised over 50 high level Forums involving Heads of Governments, Ministers, Senior Officials, Chairpersons and Chief Executives. He has written several reports and papers on globalisation, South-South trade, corporate social responsibility and good governance. Dr Kaul has been a member of the Presidential Advisory Councils of Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia and similar councils in other countries and works closely with them. He has led several business delegations to India and various countries in Africa and Asia. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of British Expertise and member of Board of Crown Agents Foundation. He is member of the Governing Council of the Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre set up by the Government of India. He is Chairman of India based micro-finance Commonwealth Inclusive Growth Services. He has held other positions including being a Member of the Board of Directors and the Chair of Governance Committee of ICICI Bank (UK) and a member of the Board of Baobab Resources PLC. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the UK-India Business Council, Central Council of the Royal Over-Seas League and the Board of the World Bank’s African Virtual University. Dr Kaul is a Liveryman of the City of London. Dr Kaul also worked with the United Nations as Public Sector Advisor for four years and later served as Senior Director at the Commonwealth Secretariat for several years. He has led international and advisory and consultancy assignments in over 40 countries in the areas of investment promotion, free trade and fair trade, private sector development and public sector reforms. He advised the South African Government of President Nelson Mandela in public service reforms, capacity building and human resource development. He conducted several Workshops involving Cabinet Ministers and senior officials to facilitate the working of the new South African Government. He also worked with Malaysian government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on public service reform, human resources development and institution building. Nominated by the British Government, he was a member of the UN Secretary-General’s Management Efficiency Group to implement Management Reforms in the United Nations. He was leader of a delegation to China for discussions with President Hu Jintao on governance and globalisation. He conducted the first evaluation for IFAD/World Bank of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus’s world famous Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. He has also addressed a special session of the UN Assembly on public management. Dr Kaul was a professor for several years and later Dean at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. He was also a member on a number of boards and consultant to many leading public and private sector firms including Shipping Corporation of India, L&T, DCM & Electronic Corporation of India, Dredging Corporation of India and LD Engineering College. He has also been an Advisor to the various Departments of the Government of India and Government of Gujarat, including the Planning Commission, Electronics Commission and Department of Foreign Trade. Dr Kaul has a PhD in Management Science from the University of Paris – Sorbonne. He is the author of a number of publications. He was also conferred the Honorary Doctorate of Letters by Cape Breton University Canada in November 2007. Dr Kaul is a Chartered Fellow of the UK Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, Fellow of International Institute of Training & Development, USA and Fellow of Computer Society of India. He was also President of the International Association of Schools and Institutions of Administration.
Mr. Mahesh Ramachandran Mahesh is a distinguished Sloan Fellow from London Business School Mahesh Ramachandran is a successful Serial and Social Entrepreneur. He also acts as non-executive director / mentor of several multi-national companies and innovative startups. Mahesh is in the governing council of TiE Chennai. TiE is world’s largest not for profit entrepreneurial network (www.tie.org) Mahesh is the Cofounder & CEO of Commonwealth Inclusive Growth Services Ltd which operates in over 6000 villages in India. It provides the crucial financial inclusion services through a large rural network servicing over 3.5 million customers across 17 states. This social entrepreneurship venture handles more than US$400 million government to citizen services. This venture is letting up one of the largest B2C assisted services through the brand Digital Kendra. Mahesh is also qualified to act as Chief Insurance Officer by Indian Insurance Regulator IRDA. Mahesh is founder Member, Indian Professionals Forum (https://www.ipforum.net) a UK based think tank promoting technology transfer and trade between UK and India. Mahesh is a visiting Faculty of renowned Indian School of Business and Bennett University where he teaches MBA students and executive programmes. Mahesh holds an MBA from University of Westminster, Sloan Masters in Leadership & Strategy (Distinguished Sloan Fellow of London Business School) from University of London Mahesh Ramachandran brings with him several decades of rich & varied experience in the field of Entrepreneurship, FinTech, Social Venture, Accredited Keiretsu Investor, Mentoring & Governance. Mahesh Ramachandran’s previous entrepreneurial ventures include peer to peer foreign exchange portal, targeted advertisement, digital mobile payment solution. Mahesh hails from Thanjavur, South India and has interest in Carnatic Music, Comics and Literature. LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/trmahesh Twitter: @trmahesh
Prof. Trichy Krishnan Trichy V. Krishnan is currently the Dean – School of Management, Bennett University, a Times Group initiative. He is a professor at NUS Business School, Singapore. He was a visiting professor at ISB for a year. He obtained his Bachelor of Engineering (Honors) degree from Madras University and worked as a Field Service Engineer for six years with Ashok Leyland Ltd., India, dealing with distributors and customers. He enrolled in the PhD program (Marketing) at The University of Texas at Dallas in 1989. After obtaining his doctorate degree in 1994 under the supervision of Frank M. Bass, he worked as a marketing faculty in the Netherlands and at Rice University, Houston, TX, USA, for around 9 years and then joined NUS, Singapore in 2003. He spends his professional time on three areas: academic research, teaching and consulting. He has written marketing research papers that have appeared in top academic journals, have got Best MBA Teacher awards at NUS, and have been doing consulting work for various companies in the US and Singapore for the past 10 years. His areas of interest include pricing of products and services, healthcare, new product/service adoption process (modeling penetration, time to peak sales, influence of price and advertising, etc.), analyzing competition using game theory framework, retailing, go-to-market introduction strategies for new products, modeling of marketing processes so as to measure effectiveness of marketing tools, marketing to JAPL (Just-Above-Poverty-Line) consumers in developing countries like India, and demand forecasting.
