Vijaya Sunder M is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management (Practice) and Programme Director of the Operational Excellence for Leaders Programme at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He also serves on the advisory board of ISB’s Executive Fellow Programme in Management and Executive Education. Previously, he was Chair of the Experiential Learning Programme (2022-2025), Academic Director of the Centre for Business Innovation (2023–2024), and a BAT Research Fellow (2021–2023).
He holds a PhD in Operational Excellence from IIT Madras and brings over 18 years of industry experience from global corporations. He has served as Head of Business Process Excellence at the World Bank Group, Assistant Vice President at Barclays, and Quality Leader at American Express and Citi.
Professor Sunder’s research focuses on operational excellence, project management, behavioural operations, and human-AI collaboration. He has authored three books and published scholarly research in leading journals, including Production and Operations Management, Journal of Operations Management, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, Journal of Business Research, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. His articles have also appeared in Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Management and Business Review, and Rotman Management. His teaching case studies, published by Harvard Business Publishing, are among the bestsellers.
Professor Sunder has received several prestigious honours, including ASQ’s Global Crosby Award, IAQ’s
Walter E. Masing Award, and recognition as one of PEX Network’s (IQPC) Top 50 Operational Excellence Thought Leaders worldwide. In 2025, he was featured in Business Mint’s 50 Under 50 Brightest Minds of India for his contributions to the field of Operational Excellence. He is also a recipient of IIT Madras Best Researcher Award in 2018, the Quality Champion Award (Gold category) by the Quality Control of India (QCI), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India in 2022, and the Financial Times Responsible Business Education Award (Runner-up) in 2022.
At ISB, he teaches PGP, Executive MBA, and PhD courses such as Business Process Excellence, Operational Excellence, Digital Transformation in Services, Project Management, and Operations Management. He has won multiple “Professor of the Year” – Best Teacher: Teaching Excellence Awards for the PGP core and elective courses for the Class of 2021 (one award), Class of 2023 (two awards), Class of 2024 (one award), Class of 2025 (three awards), and the AMPH Class of 2024 (one award).
A TEDx speaker and sought-after keynote presenter, Professor Sunder has trained over 10,000 business executives worldwide and is widely known for his innovative and experiential pedagogies.
D.V.R. Seshadri is a Professor of Marketing (Practice) at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Prior to joining ISB in 2016, he taught at several IIMs including Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and most recently Udaipur, where he had been since 2012. From 1985 to 2000, he worked in a variety of companies (public sector, family business and entrepreneurial startups, the last ten of them as CEO) spanning a variety of industries, including petroleum refining and petrochemicals, bulk drugs, active pharmaceutical ingredients, precision manufacturing, and software.
His areas of interest include B2B marketing, innovation and entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. He is actively involved with several NGOs such as Aravind Eye Care Systems and the DHAN Foundation in Madurai, as well as, with several top corporates such as the Tata Group and Larsen & Toubro (L&T). He has been engaged in teaching and consulting capacity with over 100 large corporates, both India-based and foreign MNCs. He has taught a variety of courses and programmes in MBA, executive MBA, long duration programmes in public policy, short duration executive education programs, etc. Courses that he has taught include: Business-to-Business Market Management, Reinventing through Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Leadership, Strategy Formulation and Implementation, Inspired Leadership through Personal Mastery, and Reinventing the Government.
Professor Seshadri has co-authored several books, including ‘Innovation Management,’ with Shlomo Maital, Sage India in 2007; ‘Global Risk / Global Opportunity,’ with Shlomo Maital, Sage India, in June 2010; the Indian adaptation of ‘Business Market Management (B2B): Understanding, Creating and Delivering Value,’ with James Anderson, James Narus and Das Narayandas, Pearson Publishing, in June 2010; and ‘Smartonomics for the Global Manager: Simple, Powerful Macroeconomic Tools For Success in an Uncertain World’ with Shlomo Maital, Sage India, 2016. He has developed over hundred case studies and authored several application-oriented journal articles in his areas of interest.
