Prof Veeravalli

Profile:
* Currently Director – Corporate Initiatives & Exec MBA, and Associate Professor, with Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, India, responsible for running the Global Exec MBA program and for generating & conduct of all the Executive Development programs, management consulting and applied research engagements with corporates.
* Head of “Entrepreneurship Development Forum” at the Institute, which shall evolve into an incubation center in the coming years.
* Teaching areas are Negotiation, Entrepreneurship & Business communication.
* Other activities include case writing, guiding students in projects and empirical study
* Written a case in Entrepreneurship on a company in Indian Infrastructure domain for London Business School. Was one of the less than 10 India-centric cases selected out of about 120 proposals and 15 finalists from India
* Member of the TIE Chennai Fund core group, a seed funding and support initiative for budding entrepreneurs from Tamilnadu
* Did/does Management consulting work in Product Supply Chain, Total Quality, Human Resources, Sales & Distribution management, and Business Strategy for FMCG / SME.
* Director in a software co producing Automated Test software
* Last held position as Chief Operating Officer of a tertiary care Super Specialty hospital in Chennai called Harvey Super Specialties Hospital. Continues to be a member of the Management committee
* Previously was the chief Operating Officer handling two FMCG companies in a group in Chennai, one of them a start-up, in Bottled Drinking water and other FMCG products
* Prior to that was General Manager with Godrej Sara Lee Ltd., Mumbai. Headed Product Supply, Total Quality, and HR functions on job rotation. Handled Sales & Distribution before that. Was responsible for achieving spectacular growth of the company sales in south and east zones as the head of sales for these regions
* Became General Manager at 33 years age, one of the youngest in the Godrej group to do so. Had a Fast-Track growth
* Trained ISO 9000 Auditor.
* Was the nominated Chief Executive Officer for ISO 9000 Quality Systems in Godrej Sara Lee Ltd.
* Certified Assessor for CII-EXIM BANK BUSINESS EXCELLENCE AWARD model (which is based on the European Quality Award (EFQM) model). Was part of the team that assessed TATA STEEL.
* Member of the TQM STUDY MISSION to the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE), JAPAN through CII, to study Total Quality management processes.
* Has taught a course on Quality Management at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) School of Management, mumbai, as a Co-faculty
* Other previous experiences include shipping management, projects planning and execution
* Holds a Masters Degree in Sociology. Qualified in Shipping Management.
* Done an accelerated Senior Management Certificate Program (six months duration) with Cornell University, USA, with special focus on Strategy
* Trained in the entrepreneurship teaching under the Stanford Entrepreneurship Educators Program by invitation and done the Entrepreneurship Educator Development Course with Indian School of Business

Expectations from entries:
The key area I would look for in the proposals is – apart from the track/credentials of the team and the power of the idea – is the quality & clarity of understanding of the customers/markets/environs, and the fit/savvy in the ‘to market’ game plan. Most often I find fuzz (and the weakest link) here, with may be a facile ‘porter analysis’ and / or MR data. And I would be cynical towards the ‘numbers’