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• Personal Growth

September 2008

By Namrata Gulati

Meet Professor Arindam Chaudhary, a renowned management guru and economist. Be sure to sign up for his workshop on stress management at the LP Expo 2008

Achiever Par Excellence

A renowned management guru and economist, Arindam Chaudhary is also an author, film-maker, philosopher and a transformational speaker. He is currently the dean of IIPM (Indian Institute Of Planning And Management), one of the top ten B-schools in India. Professor Arindam Chaudhary is the recipient of numerous awards: Management Guru 2000 Award, Personality Of The Decade Award, JJ Irani Award, Life Positive Reader’s award to name a few. The motivational speaker was also selected amongst one of the 50 leading thinkers to represent South Asia.

The teachings at IIPM served as an inspiration for him, so much so that within 14 years of joining the institute as a student, Professor Arindam felt the urge to become a teacher himself. Soon, he started teaching for exposure and then a corporate experience and fellowship followed. In 1995, he started a consulting firm called Planman and continued teaching simultaneously. The economist describes the greatest challenge he faced in the same year, “Organisational success has been difficult to achieve. We wanted to create a model that would keep attracting the best people possible. In the first five years, 1995-2000, we hardly did any business but we made a great team. Besides, I faced the intellectual challenge of updating my knowledge constantly. During my first workshop, I was 25 years old. However, the average age of the participants was 50!

But I realised that if you are knowledgeable, everyone is open to listening to you.” Today, the Planman Consulting firm is among the largest growing in Asia. In 2001, Professor Arindam Chaudhary launched Planman Motion Pictures with the desire to impact the life of people through cinema. Its first venture, a Bengali film – Saanjhbathir Roopkathara was announced as one of the seven outstanding movies at the London Film Festival 2002. His upcoming film, The Last Lear, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Preity Zinta was selected at the Cannes Film Festival.

In the memory of his brother, Prof Chaudhary set up The Great Indian Dream Foundation in 2000, which aims at providing education and medical facilities across various villages. Through the introduction of The Sunday Indian news weekly, the thinker fulfilled his eagerness to reach out to people who he thought, “did not bother about society”. The news weekly was thus made available in 14 regional languages for a wider reach. His books, Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch and The Great Indian Dream are best-sellers. Currently, he is working on three books relating to success, strategy and marketing. Media, he believes, is the natural extension of education and has enabled his group to take the classroom further. According to him, education and media are therefore two inter-related fields and each helps him perform better in the other, making the two his favourites among all. At the Life Positive Expo in October, Prof Arindam Chaudhary will speak on stress management. “Stress management is an interesting topic. I have some interesting, new thoughts and ideas on it. I have never ever shared these ideas with anybody. I am really looking forward to the Expo,” shares the mentor without hinting at what he plans to do this time, leaving us eager to know more! However, he reveals his own stress busters which include yoga, jumping around with his son after he gets back home extraordinarily tired, interacting and maintaining a healthy relationship with family, friends and social circle.

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