My Perspective

After T.N.Seshan and Prof Narendra Rao, its time for another addition to the full time faculty list of Great Lakes – Prof. Rakesh Singh joins Great Lakes as Professor of Rural Management and Economics. He will handle courses for PGPM and EMBA under the vertical, “Entrepreneurship and Family Managed Business with reference to Rural Management”.

Prof. Rakesh Singh has been with leading institutes like NMIMS and SPJIMR and has about 14 years of rich experience in the field of teaching and consulting.

He took his Ph.D. in Supply Chain Management. He also won the coveted Asha L Bhandarkar Gold Medal for standing First in M.A. examinations of the University of Mumbai in the year 1989. In an academic career spanning fifteen years Professor Rakesh Singh has earned the reputation of being an expert in the area of Agribusiness, rural Marketing and supply chain forecasting. He is passionate about teaching Business Economics; He believes economics is the most integrative principle between most functional areas of Management science.

Dr Rakesh Singh has conducted classes/seminars/workshop for a number of corporates in the area of Business environment, rural marketing and supply chain management and Forecasting. He has carried out research for a number of Indian organizations. Some of his research areas are related to agribusiness supply chain and vertical coordination in food retailing industry. He is published in various research journals around the globe. He is on the editorial board of many management and academic journals. He was the principal architect behind Times group food BtoB publications like Times agricultural and food processing Journal. He is a certified forecaster from the Institute of Business forecasting, Florida.

Over and above his academic rigor prof Rakesh brings in a definite touch of industry relevance by being a consultant to a number of companies, Banks and industry associations. They Include companies like Bayer crop sciences, Monsanto, Rallis, HDFC, Globus, JISCO, EID Parry, BASF, Mahindra Tractors, John Deer, AFL and a couple of other corporates.

He is the recipient of ‘The Best Faculty Award’ of NMIMS in the year 2001. Association of Indian Management Schools also awarded him the ‘The Best Research Paper’ prize in the year 2002, for his research “Probing Forecasting in Indian Firms”.

He has been invited by various industry associations to speak on issues related to Indian economy, supply chain forecasting and agribusiness issues. He spoke on IT in rural economy and role of corporates at CII Agrotech 2oo2 at Chandigarh. In 2004 he was again invited to speak on food retailing in India. He was invited to speak on Supply chain forecasting in Indian agribusiness by council of Logistics management at Mumbai in May 2004. CII institute of Logistics Management invited him to speak on quick response in food retailing in India in April 2004. He has been a regular speaker at Budget analysis by Indian Merchant Chamber, BSE and Refco securities.

This would further stregthen the faculty list at Great Lakes and make it a more attractive value proposition.