The Hindu Business Line : Strategy consultant Ramachander passes away

Chennai, June 14 Academic, theatre personality, corporate strategy consultant, prolific writer, S. Ramachander, former Director of the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) passed away here on Saturday after a brief illness. He was 63.

Prof Ramachander was an editorial consultant to The Hindu Business Line practically from the newspaper’s launch 14 years ago.

Right from offering ideas for new features in the newspaper to writing articles for them, Prof Ramachander was a prolific contributor to the newspaper. His columns, Value Spiral in Brand Line, Manager’s Handbook in The New Manager section and Jottings in the Opinion pages ran for several months.

As a person who loved to teach, he was in his element coaching young journalists on writing. “Even if you are writing for a mass medium that the newspaper is, you are, in fact, communicating one-on-one with the person who has the newspaper in hand,” he used to say. “So have an identity kit of the reader in mind, and write for that person.”

His words, often eye-openers for print journalists used to pounding away on the keys in front of a mute computer screen, flowed from his experience on the amateur stage in Chennai as part of The Madras Players, a theatre group now over 50 years old.

Prof Ramachander, recalls theatre personality Mr P.C. Ramakrishna, was a superb character actor who could lend “personality and credibility” to the mature characters that the plays demanded. Both of them debuted their stage career with Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible in 1969, recalled Mr Ramakrishna. Prof Ramachander was deeply influenced by Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teachings and wrote extensively on his philosophy.

An alumnus of the first batch of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, along with the internationally renowned strategy consultant Mr C.K. Prahalad, and later of Harvard Business School, Prof Ramachander played a key role in organising the CEO’s forum, along with Mr V. Narayanan, (former Chairman of Pond’s) which the Academy of Management Excellence, an IFMR offshoot, ran successfully for over ten years.

He was instrumental in bringing the British Open university distance learning MBA programme to India, which again was conducted by IFMR, an ICICI-funded institution. Under his leadership, IFMR started the post graduate diploma programme in the year 2000, which is now commencing its ninth batch. He played a key role in initially shaping this programme.

A prolific writer, he wrote extensively on corporate strategy and branding for Business Line and authored three books, Ascending the Value Spiral, Creativity@Work and Manager@Work.

Management consultant and a director on the Infosys Board, Ms Rama Bijapurkar, describing Prof Ramachander as a friend and guide, said their association went back many years when they both taught at IIM-A, their alma mater.

“He always powerfully articulated what I was struggling to think through; he would join the dots for me. While he didn’t teach me in a formal sense he taught me a lot,” she said, adding that he helped her develop a framework for her concepts on marketing as business strategy.

Prof Ramachander was also a strategy consultant for TVS Motor Co. Expressing grief over his demise, Mr Venu Srinivasan, Chairman and Managing Director, TVS Motor Company, told Business Line that he admired the professor for his keen mind. “The most wonderful thing about him was that he could see patterns in any confusion and come up with a structure out of which a solution would emerge,” Mr Srinivasan said.

“He had very good strategic insights into organisational issues and his ideas and suggestions would have a strategic fit with organisations,” he said, noting that TVS Motor had worked with the professor over “many, many issues, ranging from spare parts sales, manufacturing and dealerships”.

“Above all, he was a great humanist with great human values,” Mr Srinivasan said.

More Stories on : People | Newspapers & Publishing | Consulting

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
RCom threatens to claim damages if Reliance goes to court

Domestic airlines may curtail services

Weekly News Round-up

Reliance: The sibling rivalry continues

Pranab rules out rollback of retail fuel price hike

FMCG, tech stocks turn ‘safer’ bet for investors

DoT may impose eligibility conditions for 3G auction

IPO mop-up lacklustre in May at Rs 300 cr

Strategy consultant Ramachander passes away