News & Highlights

  • JANUARY & FEBRUARY 2023
  • EVENT

Alumni Events with Professor Rohit Deshpandé

In collaboration with the HBS Club of India, the center organized two in-person events for alumni with Professor Rohit Deshpandé, the center’s Faculty Chair, who recently visited Pune and Mumbai. Anil Kumar (MBA 1974) hosted the dinner in Pune in January. In Mumbai, in February, in partnership with the HBS Club of India the IRC organized a soiree at Bombay Gymkhana. Both events were attended by more than 60 alumni, some of whom travelled from different parts of the country to interact with Professor Deshpandé and their fellow alumni. Professor Deshpandé gave an update on the recent events at the School and the AMP program, and the alumni shared their personal experiences from their time at HBS.
  • DECEMBER 2022
  • EVENT

Research Roundtable with Professor Linda Hill

In December 2022, the IRC hosted the South Asia leg of a series of research roundtables with Professor Linda Hill. This was part of their ongoing research on Leadership in the Digital Era and focused on the changing role of leadership and workplace dynamics in the era of remote and hybrid work models. We had 6 participants – leaders from across industries – who shared their experiences and insights from navigating the post-Covid world. The participants' varied backgrounds, from veteran leaders of large legacy organizations to ‘digital native’ start-up founders, made for an enriching discussion with unique perspectives on how leadership has evolved with time.
  • OCTOBER 2022
  • EVENT

boAt Lifestyle Case Study

A case study on boAt Lifestyle by Professor Rajiv Lal, co-authored by the India Research Centre’s Kairavi Dey, was taught in the MBA Required Curriculum in October 2022. The MBA class had the opportunity to interact with boAt’s founders, Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta, and CEO, Vivek Gambhir (MBA’97). boAt’s marketing strategy, which propelled it from a start-up to one of India’s most prominent lifestyle brands and the world’s fifth-largest wearables brand, has many lessons for leaders around the world.
  • OCTOBER 2022
  • EVENTS

Book Tour on the Partition

Research by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute (LMFSAI), Harvard University, led by Professor Jennifer Leaning, Research Fellow at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, has culminated into a book titled ’The 1947 Partition of British India: Forced Migration and its Reverberations’. The book, co-edited by Professor Leaning and Shubhangi Bhadada, Mittal Institute Fellow at LMFSAI, is a collection of chapters related to Partition studies. Experts from various disciplines from the three major modern nation-states affected by this cataclysm—Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan—have collaborated for this book. In October 2022, Professor Leaning accompanied by Hitesh Hathi, Executive Director, LMFSAI, toured India, Pakistan, and Dubai. The India Research Center assisted with the book tour and media outreach. An interview with the editors was published in a mainstream English daily column in India.
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New Research on the Region

  • 2023
  • Book

Deeply Responsible Business: A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership

By: Geoffrey Jones

Corporate social responsibility has entered the mainstream, but what does it take to run a successful purpose-driven business? This book examines leaders who put values alongside profits to showcase the challenges and upside of deeply responsible business. Should business leaders play a role in solving society’s problems? For decades, CEOs have been told that their only responsibility is to the bottom line. But consensus is growing that companies―and their leaders―must engage with their social, political, and environmental contexts. Jones distinguishes deep responsibility, which can deliver radical social and ecological responses, from corporate social responsibility, which is often little more than window dressing. Deeply Responsible Business provides a historical perspective on the social responsibility of business, going back to the Quaker capitalism of George Cadbury and the worker solidarity of Edward Filene and carrying us through to impact investing and the B-corps. Jones profiles exemplary business leaders from around the world who combined profits with social purpose to confront inequality, inner-city blight, and ecological degradation, while navigating restrictive laws and authoritarian regimes. The business leaders profiled in this book were motivated by bedrock values and sometimes driven by faith. They chose to operate in socially productive fields, interacted with humility with stakeholders, and felt a duty to support their communities. While far from perfect, each one showed that profit and purpose could be reconciled. Many of their businesses were wildly successful―though financial success was not their only metric of achievement. As many companies seek to coopt more ethically sensitized consumers, Jones gives us a new perspective to tackle tough questions and envisions a future in which companies and entrepreneurs can play a key role in healing our communities and protecting the natural world.

  • March 2023
  • Case

Pratham 2.0: Sustaining Innovation

By: Brian Trelstad, Samantha Webster and Malini Sen

Pratham is a Mumbai-based nonprofit, which focuses on high-quality, low-cost, and replicable interventions to address gaps in India’s education system. From inception, it has pioneered innovation, from early childhood learning centers to adaptive literacy programs, to national surveys on basic education performance that informed national education policy.  As Pratham reflects on its track record of influence on the Indian education system, the leadership team wonders whether Pratham could extend its programs within India to fill some of the gaps that existed between early childhood education, formal schooling, and vocational training. And whether the nonprofit could explore new innovations, which could help it achieve its mission of ‘Every Child in School & Learning Well.’ After more than 25 years of meaningful impact, how would they determine the future of Pratham? And who would lead that future?

  • February 2023
  • Teaching Material

Bangladesh: Into the Maelstrom

By: Reshmaan Hussam, Sophus A. Reinert and Jaya Y. Wen

In the fall of 2018, Rohima Begum considered her options as the small island, or “char,” on which her family’s house rested slowly but inescapably eroded into the mighty Brahmaputra River in northern Bangladesh. Should she move to another island or into the city on the mainland, or risk a dangerous journey to Europe? While much of the world looks on climate change as a looming threat, vulnerable countries like Bangladesh already feel its impacts. Seasonal rains and storms, increasing snowmelt from the Himalayas, and rising sea levels create floods that can cover most of the country’s land mass – and threaten most of the country’s 169 million people, with millions displaced each year. While the government of Bangladesh invests billions into adaptive measures, from coastal tree-planting to water treatment to embankments, it cannot hope to address the destruction of a global crisis alone.

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Mumbai Staff

Anjali Raina
Executive Director
→ Biography
Rachna Chawla
Associate Director, Community Engagement
Anthea D’Souza
Associate Director, Financial and Business Administration
Kairavi Dey
Researcher
Kanika Jain
Research Associate
Radhika Kak
Researcher
Tanisha Murdeshwar
Research and Educational Coordinator
Rashmi Patel
Manager, Operations
Malini Sen
Senior Researcher
Sanjivani Shedge
Executive Assistant
Rachna Tahilyani
Senior Associate Director, Research