Taking a major step forward towards projecting the PGPM programme amongst industry participants, SPJIMR has created an advisory board consisting of high ranking, seasoned people from various organizations spanning across multiple verticals. The first successful meeting of the board members was held on 9th October 2009 at J.W. Marriot, Mumbai.
The main objective of the Board will be to give advice on substantive issues affecting the development and success of the PGPM Programme. The Board will also assist the PGPM Programme Office in designing the course curriculum in line with industry need and will also help in Positioning of the PGPM programme.
The list of members present on the board is as follows:
| Manesh L. Shrikant |
Honorary Dean |
SPJIMR |
| Indu Niranjan |
Programme In charge – PGPM |
SPJIMR |
| Anil Warrier |
Director – India Staffing |
Microsoft India |
| Anita Tripathy |
Director – HR |
Cognizant Technology |
| Ashok Ramchandran |
Director – HR |
Vodafone India |
| Bijay Sahoo |
HR President and Chief Peoples Officer |
Reliance Retail |
| Chandramouli V. |
Director – Strategy & HR |
Cadburys India |
| Dhananjay Bansod |
Chief Peoples Officer |
Deloitte India |
| Lalit Sawhney |
Vice President |
IFIP |
| Paritosh Joshi |
Chief Executive Officer |
STAR CJ Network India Pvt. Ltd. |
| Pramod Solanki |
General Manager – E&C HR |
Larson & Toubro Ltd. |
| Rajagopal J. |
Executive VP & Global Head, Consulting |
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. |
| Rajiv Dubey |
President, Passenger Car Division |
Tata Motors Ltd. |
| Ravi Trivedy |
Executive Director |
KPMG |
| Ravishankar G |
MD and CEO |
Geometric Ltd. |
| Robin Singh |
Director – HR |
John Deere India |
| Sabiha Kazi |
Director – Head, Client Delivery |
Citibank |
| Sanjay Sharma |
Director – Head, Supply Chain |
Hindustan Coca Cola Ltd. |
| Shivakumar L. |
Sr VP & Head – Western Region |
ICRA |
| Sunil Sanghai |
Director |
Goldman Sachs |
| Suprakash Mukherjee |
Sr. General Manager, Global Sourcing |
John Deere India |
| Supratim Sarkar |
Executive VP – Group Head |
SBI Capital Markets Ltd. |
| Thomas George |
GM – Western Region & Regional Business Head |
Wipro Infotech |
| Yogesh Patgaonkar |
Vice President – Talent Management |
RPG Enterprises |
The meeting which was chaired by our Honorable Dean Dr. M.L.Shrikant and presided over by the programme-in-charge Professor Indu Niranjan , saw full attendance of our eminent professors as well as the industry participants who were invited as part of the advisory board panel.
The presence of people entailed above for in meeting, reinforced the standing of SPJIMR brand in market and also saw high level of enthusiasm amongst the industry leaders to contribute back to the academia by providing their inputs on how they want the PGPM programme aimed for experienced professional to shape in future.
Mr. Paritosh Joshi, who is the CEO for Star CJ, was of opinion that the course should be structured in a manner that allows participants to widen the horizon and focus. He believed the course is far too focused while students have come here to seek diversity in their career. According to him the course should enable them to role-play out of life experiences. He also added that Better Generalists are those who know the world. He stressed upon more outward looking attitude needed to be adopted by the institute to have participants work on real-life research project as they go along the course with more emphasis on case study based methodology.

The kind of commitment from industry towards the course was very well reflected by Mr. Ravi Trivedy of KPMG, who also happens to be the visiting faculty for the programme, shuttling between meetings and airport to find time for this event. He reflected back on his teaching experience with the batch and told the board about how students have taken risks after leaving settled job, which reflects on their ability to adorn more challenging roles in future. Apart from imparting project management, in his opinion, he would like to see the student be more sharp in their analytical ability, especially when it comes to pulling apart excel sheets etc. He also wants the institute to hone the marketing skills of the participants so that they can diversify easily and should show ability to weave story line around industry problems. According to him Industry Aligned with Professors – is a Great Opportunity, and with merging markets as the new focus, faculty should direct students to solve real world problems.

Our honorable Dean , also invited couple of our students to the meeting and it turned out to be an excellent idea , as industry leaders were eager to listen from them about what they expected out this course and how they aspired to place themselves in future vis-à-vis their learning from the programme. Vivek , Nitin , Anindya & Prateek spoke well , when they were presented with this opportunity & the faculty as a whole was more than satisfied by the clear direction plus thought process presented by our representatives.
Mr. Dhananjay Bansod , Chief Peoples Officer of
Deloitte India , pointed some key challenges in front of the programme , for which he expected the institute to take make some strategic moves in future. He questioned the fact that how exactly “Experience + MBA” is envisioned as “Catapult or Ramp?” Some other key focus areas pointed out by him stemmed from following questions:
- What transformation does it bring to someone after experience and then MBA and what value does it bring to the person?
- How to position this course?
He also saw some relevant challenges which directed at the industry, of which the major one being how to position such participants with peers who are not MBA and still delivering.

As per the feedback which was obtained from faculty and our Honorable Dean, the first interaction of the advisory board members was very successful in meeting it initial objective of providing a common platform aimed at nurturing the PGPM course specifically by taking into consideration views of various industry leaders. It provided lot of insights for academia on how to shape decisions in future regarding PGPM as well as it also provided industry leaders an opportunity to meet the eminent faculty behind PGPM programme. According to us the institute has invested well in this initiative and onus lies on us to leverage as participants of the program by interacting more with the board through mentoring process as well as maintain momentum to have board become more effective in bringing about changes as per industry requirements, so that we achieve higher level of penetration of PGPM brand.