The halls of Kellogg’s School of Management in Chicago and the Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai are silent today. Kellogg’s lost an emeritus professor who has been teaching there since 1973 and Great Lakes lost its founder and Chairman. He was Professor Bala in Kellogg’s and Uncle Bala in Great Lakes to all the students and faculty.
For me he was a management guru and my Prof Bala, whom I have known for the last 20 years.
I first met Prof Bala when I was in Hindustan Unilever and the then Chairman, Keki Dadiseth, organised a day with him for senior managers. He was incisive, sharp and an excellent teacher. I then lost touch with him and bumped into him again when I joined the Godrej Consumer Products Board in 2008. My education by him re-started again as I was a first time board member, and I learnt a lot from seeing him on the board, his views on how organisations build information systems, how they should allocate capital and how they should think of human capital.
Shaping thinking, syllabus
Prof Bala was involved in the selection of the IIM Bangalore faculty in the late ’60s and in the ’70s he was involved with MDI Gurgaon. He was on the founding faculty list of ISB, Hyderabad. He played a crucial role in shaping the thinking and syllabus in all three places. He had more than a hundred research papers to his credit.
Prof Bala was an institution builder and a proud Indian. In 2008, Roshni Nadar, current Chairperson, HCL, and who was then on the Kellogg’s India Day committee, asked me to do a keynote session at Kellogg’s. It was a wonderful India day event, which had Ambassador Ronen Sen and Shashi Tharoor as keynote speakers that day. I was very impressed with the event and asked the students for the origins of the event. Lo and behold, the India Day was started by Prof Bala at Kellogg’s in 1991 and his first speaker was Dr Manmohan Singh, later to be PM of India. I discussed this with Prof Bala when I met him next. He mentioned to me that in 1991, few students and fewer businesses in the US had exposure to India and he felt that India would be a future economic force and hence he started the India Day at Kellogg’s. His idea was to build India in America in his known way — through a thought leadership event. Today, most famous business schools have an India Day. Prof Bala was 30 years ahead of everyone in visioning India and its promise.
I was then more regularly in touch with Prof Bala after he started Great Lakes in Chennai. I went and spoke at its old campus, which was in Srinagar colony of the Saidapet area and was just in a few buildings. I have spoken at Great Lakes in its new campus at least a dozen times in the last ten years. Great Lakes was his labour of love and he was passionate to develop an excellent institution. Prof Bala was a genial guy, full of fun and jokes; the only time I have seen him being tough is when he saw time indiscipline amongst his students. He was a strict disciplinarian. A walk with him in the Great Lakes library is an education; it has pictures of him with the legendary Dean Jacobs of Kellogg’s and President Obama amongst others and every picture had a nice backstory to it.
Uncle Bala to students
Prof Bala started a second campus of Great Lakes in Gurgaon and I spent some time with him on a few occasions there. Prof Bala loved his students; to them he was Uncle Bala and signed off all mails to his students as Uncle Bala. He was amazing. In 2016, he called me to do a speech at his book launch. He co-authored a book, Living Legends, Learning Lessons with a student of his — Kavipriya. That was an amazing event and I cannot think of many great, celebrity professors co-authoring books with their students. That spoke volumes about his connect and humility.
I last spoke with him in April this year.
Prof Bala will be remembered for his trademark attire — white shirt and white trousers, with a blue blazer thrown on. He was a great Sivaji Ganesan fan and would hum many of the old Tamil songs in board meetings and in various sessions. Prof Bala had a wicked sense of humour. He would always tell me, “Shiv, I paid for one bypass and got a quadruple bypass; I got a buy one get three free offer.” I would tell him “Prof, you have done more in one life than what people can do in four, may you live long.”
I can’t say that to him any more. Professor Bala, Uncle Bala, Board Director Bala, Chairman Bala, Entrepreneur Bala, Researcher Bala, Author Bala, Padmashree Bala, you have been a guru to so many; a lot of business school graduates in India owe their thinking to you. I will always be your student. RIP Prof Bala.
( The writer is the Group Executive President, Corporate Strategy & Business Development, Aditya Birla Group.)