Kavil Ramachandran

Biography

Professor Kavil Ramachandran, a founding faculty set up the Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development at the ISB in 2001. Later, he was the Associate Dean (Academic Programmes) before becoming the Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of Family Business and Wealth Management.  Currently, he is the Executive Director of the Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise at the Indian School of Business.  He has specialized in family business, entrepreneurship and strategy and has over 30 years of combined experience as an academic at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and the Indian School of Business.   He was a faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad for 15 years prior to joining ISB. He has been teaching courses on family business and entrepreneurship for various target groups. He has been a member of several national level committees of the Department of Science and Technology, SEBI  and UPSC. He is on the Board of several companies and advises family businesses, growth companies and development institutions in India and abroad. He has done research on family business, entrepreneurship and strategy, and has authored/edited seven books and published extensively in reputed Indian and overseas journals. His consulting experience includes areas such as family business governance, professionalization, succession planning, strategic planning, identification of new opportunities for growth, corporate entrepreneurship and turn around strategies in family and non-family environments. He is a frequent speaker to communities of family businesses in India and abroad, and writes for popular media regularly. He has written several management cases, and has conducted training programmes for family businesses on governance, professionalization, strategic management and entrepreneurship. He has been associated with the FBN International for several years, and has served on various advisory committees of the Government of India, World Bank, Securities and Exchange Board of India. His latest book the “The 10 Commandments for Family Business” has been published by the SAGE in January 2015. He has been a pioneer academic entrepreneur, propagating the message of strengthening family business in India and outside.

Research Interest

family business governance, professionalization, succession planning, strategic planning, identification of new opportunities for growth, corporate entrepreneurship and turn around strategies in family and non-family environments