Pramath Raj Sinha: The classroom entrepreneur
The first dean of the Indian School of Business and co-founder of Ashoka University on a new classroom for women, and trysts with chief ministers
By the time we get to lunch at Mumbai’s Sea Lounge at the Taj Mahal Palace, the restaurant has begun serving tea. The place exudes an old-world charm, with live piano music, the clink of china and the buzz of conversation. We are ushered into a much-coveted sea-facing table. Outside, the afternoon sun makes everything sparkle as barges and boats criss-cross the Arabian Sea against the backdrop of the imposing Gateway of India.
It’s 3 pm. Pramath Raj Sinha hasn’t had lunch. The 52-year-old entrepreneur had flown into Mumbai that morning and had just finished speaking at a business school event on education. Sinha was the founding dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, and is co-founder of Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana.
His most recent venture is the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women in Delhi, an alternative master’s in business administration (MBA) programme. This all-women residential programme tries to address the problem that far more women graduate from high school than men, but get left behind in careers. Sinha says he was inspired by institutions like Wellesley College of Massachusetts, US, where women get the confidence to express themselves. The Vedica curriculum includes subjects that many conventional MBAs neglects, like politics, sociology and history. We also work on personal development skills during this program. The first batch of 36 Vedica scholars has just graduated and Sinha informs me that one student has received an offer from Google at a starting salary of Rs22 lakh.
By now we have settled into our seaside seats and turned our attention to the menu. We debate the relative merits of keema ghotala (a spicy Parsi keema with bread), a smoked salmon sandwich or a BLT burger, and end up settling for the latter two.
Sinha grew up in Patna, in a house with a printing press. His father and grandfather were writers. Writing didn’t pay all the bills, so Sinha’s father started a small textbook-publishing business to supplement his income and pay for the education of his four children—three daughters and Pramath, who was the youngest. Sinha recalls going on marketing trips with his father in winter. “We called it canvassing; we would fill the car with calendars and diaries and call on schoolteachers with these gifts. I thought it was a lot of fun; only later I realized it was serious marketing," he says.
Years later, it was another printing press that drew Sinha back to the country of his birth. By then, he was an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, with a PhD in applied mechanics and robotics from the University of Pennsylvania, US, and had been working as a consultant since 1993 with McKinsey & Co. in Toronto. And then one day he was assigned to a project on newsprint. The project was in Canada, but it had an India component. Sinha tells me about the days he spent in India at the time, visiting newspaper offices and finally working at the Ballarpur Industries paper plant as part of the project.
Sinha prints and edits a Hindi literary journal called ‘Nai Dhara’, which was started by his father. Growing up in a printing press has made him a keen proofreader, he says. “People don’t realize I am a nitpicker. I can pick an extra space in copies and my editors hate me sometimes. The moment they show me something, the first thing I do is pick up the mistakes. -
“It was an almost surreal existence. At one level you are working for McKinsey, which in Toronto was boardrooms and office and always talking to CEOs. Here in India, I was in a paper plant in Haryana, living in a guest house with an Indian toilet and a dhobi visiting every day. We were sitting in our ganjis every night because it was so hot. Hanging out with the workers, speaking in Bhojpuri with the Bihari labourers, having shouting matches with the union."
Source - Founding Team