Ms Pallavi Jha (Chairperson & Managing Director)

Ms Jha has completed her Masters in Business Administration from Syracuse University, New York and began her career as a marketing executive with Proctor and Gamble Ltd. After one year with the company, she got involved in the management of the family businesses of the Walchand Group, as the Executive Director of Hindustan Construction Company Ltd., one of India's leading construction companies.

She has been responsible for restructuring Walchand Capital, now Walchand People First Ltd, into a new strategic business direction and making it one of the pioneering new businesses in the new economy and services. She has also spearheaded the company's new business operation in professional Training and Development in the area of performance improvement of people and is primarily responsible for bringing to India the global industry leader, Dale Carnegie Training.

She brings a varied background in corporate policy-making and new business initiatives in various fields. She has a leading presence in the Indian commercial landscape and is active in a number of industry foray covering training and development, media, technology and financial services sectors. Ms Jha is the recipient of the prestigious FIE Foundation National Award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship in India.

Earlier, she has held the prestigious office of Chairperson, CII Maharashtra Council and has in this critical role undertaken several initiatives towards development of economy and commercial interests for the Industries in the State of Maharashtra. She is also an active member of FICCI and the Rotary Club of Bombay.

Mr Sanjay Jha (Executive Director)

Mr Jha, a Master of Business Administration from XLRI, Jamshedpur, graduated in Economics with distinction from Fergusson College, Pune and has completed his Masters of Arts in Economics from the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, University of Pune.

Mr Jha has previously worked with ANZ Grindlays Bank Plc (Senior Manager – Marketing), Bank of America (Assistant Vice President) and Alliance Capital Management L.P., New York, USA (as Vice President), ITC Threadneedle. In his banking career, one of his most challenging assignments was conducting Corporate training programs for the complete management staff in automated banking software.

In his last assignment with Zurich Financial (earlier known as ITC Threadneedle AMC Ltd.), Mr Jha was Senior Vice President in charge of Marketing & Sales of mutual funds. He has successfully launched the Top 200 Fund and the High Interest Fund.

He is the founder of Cricketnext.com, one of the most popular cricket portals in the world with over 800,000 registered users and one billion hits per month. Recently, the portal was successfully sold to one of the leading media and entertainment houses in India.

Mr Jha has conducted professional Management Development Programs in the areas of Marketing, Media Training, Internet Branding, Dot com Funding and Crisis Management which have been extremely well received. He has also conducted several training programs on behavioral skills, management development, and corporate communications for several reputed companies including Bharat Petroleum, Philips India, ICICI Bank, Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd, IDBI Bank, DSP Merril Lynch, Elf Lubricants, Marico Industries, Cummins, Seagram, L&T International, Rolta India, Mastek, Ion Exchange, J.M. Morgan Stanley, Hikal, SBI Capital Market etc.

Mr Jha is a regular columnist and contributor with several newspapers and magazines such as Business Standard, Indian Express, and Business Today etc and has also appeared as an expert commentator on various issues on diverse television channels such as CNN, CNBC, NDTV, BBC, Star Network, and Doordarshan etc. Mr Jha has anchored celebrity chat shows on Zed TV (the educational channel of the Zee TV Group) where he has interviewed several renowned business heads.

Mr Jha is a visiting faculty at several leading business schools including the Indian Institute of Management, Sydhenham Management Institute, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management/ Mass Communications etc.

Balakrishna Jayasimha (Head Learning Delivery)

Balakrishna Jayasimha, currently pursuing his doctorate in Behavioural Psychology, comes with an experience of more that 16 years both in the Industry and education. He has spent over 9 years as an organizational catalyst/training, design consultant with a track record of producing extraordinary results for more than 50 National and International organizations in the field of Information Technology, Manufacturing, Hospitality and Education. A commitment to human development, he is an energetic Initiator with the ability to understand people at the emotional level. He is also a regular contributor to the print media in the area of Spirituality in Management where his articles have been featured regularly. He has worked independently with multi-national companies across vertical hierarchy, heterogeneous and homogeneous groups in designing modules at multi-levels of staff/management with an emphasized focus on Behaviour and Attitudinal Change. He has more than 7,000 hours of combined in-house and outbound experiential learning workshops for corporate leaders / executives.