When IIT Bombay alum Nitin Nohria stepped down as the dean of the Harvard Business School in 2020 after a decade, the man who stepped into his shoes was Srikant Datar, an alum of IIM Ahmedabad. Oxford University is all set to welcome IIT Delhi alum Soumitra Dutta as dean of the Saïd Business School in June this year. Nohria, Datar and Dutta are in a growing pool of Indian Americans in leadership roles at global business schools.

Consider some of the criss-crossing postings.
Dutta, founding dean of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell, was earlier on the faculty at INSEAD, another leading B-school with campuses in France and Singapore.

When Dutta became the dean of the Johnson B-school in early 2012, Sunil Kumar was the dean at University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Kumar moved on to be provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Johns Hopkins University in 2016. The present dean of Chicago Booth, Madhav Rajan, graduated from the University of Madras before moving to the US for higher education.
The phenomenon of Indian-origin professors in visible roles in the American business education ecosystem isn’t new. The earliest was Dipak C Jain, who became the dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 2001. He is now a president at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.

From management gurus to deans

First came the Indian management gurus who earned the respect of western academia. Foremost among them were CK Prahalad, professor of corporate strategy at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M Ross School of Business, and Jagdish N Sheth, a globally known scholar of consumer behaviour, relationship marketing and competitive strategy who is a professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.
Prahalad, who passed away in 2010, changed the way the world viewed India’s and other emerging markets’ economic potential with his 2004 book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits.

Jagdish Sheth’s book, The Rule of Three, co-authored with marketing professor Rajendra Sisodia of Babson College, has been the foundation for investment bankers and policy makers on industry consolidation.
The legacy of the gurus made it easier for a later group of Indians to rise in American academia. Today, the Indian presence is felt not just at the top, but also down the long ladder of US B-schools.
There is Srilata Zaheer at University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, Paul Almeida at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, Raghu Sundaram at New York University’s Leonard N Stern School of Business, Vallabh Sambamurthy at the Wisconsin School of Business, Anuj Mehrotra at George Washington University School of Business, and Jagmohan S Raju, who is vice-dean of the Wharton executive education programme.

Some of them have even created an informal WhatsApp group called ‘Desi business deans’ – made up of administrators and upcoming stars. The group helps in networking and sharing experiences not just on administrative issues but often also for collaborative research. During the pandemic, the members shared experiences of the hybrid model of in-person and remote classes.
Crossing bridges with an Indian accent
Not many Indians were invited to the top B-school tables even a couple of decades ago. Dipak C Jain, who is considered a door-opener for other Indians, told this writer, “Back then, I was not high-profile and spoke English with an Indian accent. But after the 9/11 attacks, I went all out to reach recruiters and support our students. We achieved 91% placements at Kellogg that year.”
Notwithstanding the ‘Indian accent’, English language skills is an advantage Indian American professors have always enjoyed in the US and Europe. “When I arrived at Virginia Tech as a graduate student, I was solely focused on understanding the American accent,” George Washington University’s Anuj Mehrotra told this author. “Since then, I have had the fortune of working with some great colleagues who made it easier for someone who didn’t look like them or shared the same background.”

Other gaps needed to be crossed too. For Mehrotra, shifting from research and teaching to administration involved honing very different skills. The challenge for many Indians has been about building bridges between business and other disciplines, such as engineering – the home discipline for many Indian students and faculty members.
Helping Indians rise in business academia is the growing power of Indian engineers in western boardrooms. From Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella to IBM’s Arvind Krishna and Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, several top American technology companies are headed by Indian Americans CEOs.

Like some of the business leaders, first-generation Indian American professors are acknowledged to have brought in diversity and different perspectives, having grown up in India and, in most cases, educated in Indian institutions.
The westward rush in the 1970s

“Many of us have learnt to be flexible and do better than others even in difficult environments. That’s a big advantage for Indian academicians – not just in America but in Europe, Australia and Asia as well,” says Jain, who earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and statistics and his master’s in mathematical statistics from Gauhati University before going to the US for his PhD.

“Many of us came to the US in the 1970s and ’80s from the IITs and IIMs at a time when opportunities to do PhDs were limited in India,” says Sri Zaheer of Minnesota's Carlson School, who moved to the US after an MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad.

Fewer Indians are seen in top positions across the pond in the UK, but things are changing here too. While Dutta is heading to Oxford Saïd, Jaideep Prabhu is there at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School. Prabhu says that Indian academic talent went to US B-schools in the 1970s and 80s because of better international rankings and research opportunities.
Global curriculums and Indian students
The globalisation of business education curriculum and the need for B-schools to attract top talent have deepened the traditional pool from which deans are selected.
India-specific curriculum and research projects, too, have made an impact. An example is the HBS India Research Centre in Mumbai, which has supported case studies and research projects focused on South Asian business since 2006.
The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University, founded in 2003 with support from UK-based steel magnate, supports interdisciplinary research to deepen the understanding of critical issues relevant to South Asia. The director of the institute since 2010, Tarun Khanna, is known for his research in entrepreneurship in emerging markets as a means of economic and social development.

Business schools around the world are also wooing Indian students like never before. “Over the last few years, the number of Indian students planning an MBA abroad has increased exponentially. A large majority choose to go to the US to pursue a two-year MBA course, mainly because of the job prospects after graduation. Students who are looking for a one-year MBA prefer the UK and other European countries,” explains Mumbai-based education consultant Karan Gupta.
In 2020, 26,129 students from India took the graduate management admission test or GMAT. Of them, 39.2% sent scores to US B-schools and 9.2% sent scores to UK institutes. Since most business schools need GMAT scores for admission, these numbers provide an insight into Indian students planning to study abroad, specifically in the US and UK.

According to the ministry of external affairs, out of over 2,61,000 students who went abroad to study in 2020, nearly 30% joined an MBA or other business programmes.
This is despite the much higher costs of management education overseas. At most top US B-schools, the average cost of attending a two-year MBA is $195,000 (Rs 1.4 crore). In comparison, the Indian School of Business at Hyderabad, the most expensive B-school in India, offers a one-year MBA programme at around Rs 28 lakh. IIM Ahmedabad, often the top ranked one, charges around Rs 23 lakh for a two-year MBA programme.
Even though more Indian students are going to western B-schools, fewer are pursuing higher advanced degrees in management. That’s why it isn’t assured that the number of Indians in top jobs at the B-schools would keep increasing.
Carlson’s Zaheer says, “Interest in business PhD programmes from Indian students has waned. We still get some outstanding Indian students in our doctoral programmes, but fewer as a proportion. On the other hand, we have many more outstanding PhD students coming from countries like South Korea and China in recent years.”
So, a couple of decades from now, another part of Asia might see a dawn of deans.
Ishani Dattagupta is a freelance writer based in Kolkata