.jpg "Dr. Anirban Sengupta - Pioneering Sustainability and Strategic Leadership in Business Education")
Myself, Dr. Anirban Sengupta, Co-Founder
& CEO, Sustainability and Strategy (SusStrat) Eduvisory. I had been with
CRISIL in its initial years and with FICTH Ratings India thereafter as Vice
President and Member of the India Startup Team—for nearly a decade. I then
moved into academics and spent the next two decades handling several leadership
roles as Centre Director, Dean, Director, and Executive Director—with leading
institutions like Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad; Goa
Institute of Management, Goa; University of Petroleum & Energy Studies
(UPES) Dehradun, Mody University of Science and Technology, Rajasthan;
International School of Business & Media, Pune—and served as a Visiting
Professor with IIM Indore, IIM Kozhikode, XIM Bhubaneshwar, and the University
of Antwerp, Belgium. My key area of interest is at the interface of Marketing,
Finance, Strategy, and Sustainability. I hold a graduate degree in Electrical
Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata; a master's degree in Management
from NMIMS Mumbai, under the University of Mumbai; and a PhD in Management from
the University of Pune.
Could you tell us about your
venture, Sustainability & Strategy Eduvisory and its services?
“ESG talent is critical for advancing
sustainability strategy." – World Economic Forum, January 9, 2022. “Fixing
the talent gap to deliver on ESG goals” – Korn Ferry, Jan 22, 2022. “Blues of
green roles: India Inc struggles with ESG talent gap” The Economic Times, July
2, 2023.
SusStrat Eduvisory has a primary mission
of addressing this pressing industry requirement of a steady pipeline of
Sustainability and ESG-trained professionals—needed to take forward the ESG
agenda of the nation and ensure it evolves as a green-&-developed economy
by 2047 and meets its Net Zero target by 2070. While capacity building is our
primary focus, extending advisory services and undertaking practice-based
research is a natural offshoot of the same. We work with both industry and
academia. We have a special focus on the MSME sector, which accounts for nearly
30% of our GDP.
Could you share your
professional journey, highlighting the significant milestones that have defined
and shaped your career?
I started my professional journey in the
industry—I spent a decade initially in Manufacturing with CEAT Tyres and then
moved into credit rating post my management studies. This was a decade of
phenomenal learning for me—I saw the industry working from various functional
angles as well as from a strategic perspective across sectors; served as a
business development head as well as an analyst; worked with stable
organizations as well as with start-ups; got an amazing national and
international overview—which significantly shaped my next two decades of
academic journey and helped me evolve into a practice-based academic. I have
rediscovered myself multiple times over the last three decades in my quest to
add value to myself and all those who have confidence in me—launching SusStrat Eduvisory
is the latest move in that journey.
Could you share your roles and responsibilities as the Co-Founder & CEO of Sustainability & Strategy Eduvisory?
Providing strategic leadership is my
primary responsibility at Sustainability & Strategy (SusStrat) Eduvisory as
its Co-Founder & CEO. However, being a professional services venture and
that too in its initial days, strategy execution is also a responsibility,
which I do through my very inspired start-up team.
Could you highlight some of the
awards and accolades you’ve received throughout your career?
The biggest award that a professor gets
is when his students do well in their careers and get recognized in the
industry. I am happy to see so many of my students are today holding very
senior positions in the industry and can be spotted all around the globe.
Coming to recognition, I got the Dewang Mehta Best Teacher in Retail Management
Award in 2009.
Given your experience as a visiting
faculty member at institutions like IIM Indore and IIM Kozhikode, how do you
perceive the future of business education and management, and what trends do
you find most compelling?
As long as business will be there, there
will be demand for business education and management. With India steadily
emerging as a leading global economy—and all set to take the No. 3 position by
2030—the demand for trained manpower from the Business Schools also grows
rapidly. However, the issue is whether the Business Schools are really
producing "employable, trained manpower”!
In order to ensure that the graduates
they produce are employable, Business Schools need to remain cutting-edge and
need to significantly improve the industry-academia interface. For example,
while the industry is talking about the ESG talent gap, only a handful of B
Schools have sustainability and ESG concepts embedded in their program
offerings. Business schools also need to offer increased cross-functional
inputs, as real-life business is cross-functional, but not much initiative is
being taken in these areas. So, in a nutshell, while demand for business
education will increase, Business Schools that can quickly align to changing
industry trends and requirements will grow and prosper, while others may find
it increasingly difficult to survive.
What’s your advice for emerging
business leaders who want to transform their passion for sustainability into
effective, actionable strategies within their organizations?
Businesses no longer can think only for
their shareholders; they need to keep the well-being of all stakeholders in
mind. They need to be purpose-driven first and then profit-driven. In order to
be relevant to its stakeholders, they need to align with the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by all the sovereign members of the United
Nations Member States in 2015. The sooner they start this journey of alignment
and start contributing, the better it is for their financial performance too.
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