N Balasubramanian

With more than half a century of work experience behind him, 'Bala' has a unique blend of exposure to industry and academia that is not easy to come by. Three and a half decades of senior and board level responsibilities in companies like Imperial Chemical Industries, Britannia, and Wipro are complemented by teaching and research activities at the Indian Institutes of Management Ahmedabad and Bangalore over the last two decades, and still counting.

A non-practising Chartered Accountant with a PhD in Business Finance, his interests span corporate governance, business ethics and responsibility, and board level counselling. He has been on statutory and advisory boards of listed companies as well as early-to-mid-term start-ups, served as a member of the Government-sponsored National Advisory Committee on Accounting Standards, CII's National Council on Corporate Governance, the Advisory Committee of the National Stock Exchange's Centre for Excellence in Corporate Governance, and also a Government Committee on Corporate Excellence through Governance, many of whose far-seeing recommendations have found their way in to corporate legislation. He serves on the Editorial and Advisory Boards of some Indian and International scholarly journals.

He has been privileged to design and deliver training programmes for several hundred incumbent directors of public and private sector corporations, and teaching courses to a much larger number of management students and executives. He has authored and/or edited several books and research papers. This is his seventh book, and first with Random House.

Bala lives with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and a charming granddaughter in Thane, near Mumbai.