08 February, 2022, Bengaluru: Ravikanth Vazrapu, student of the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme of IIM Bangalore, is among three doctoral students who are recipients of the IIM Kozhikode Scholars for Future Award 2021. The other two doctoral students who received the inaugural awards are from IIT Madras and IIM Kozhikode.
IIMK, as part of its silver jubilee celebrations, had initiated this award for early-stage PhD students in Management who are from institutes which have secured ranks as per the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2018, 2019 or 2020. Applications were invited from students across India who are pursuing a full-time PhD/an equivalent programme, enrolled not before June 2019.
The themes of research proposals for which applications were invited included: Sustainability in Business; Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethical/Adaptive/Transformational Leadership, and Business Resilience in Crisis. Other themes impacting or addressing key priorities of India with research potential were also considered. All themes had to include deep contextual reference to India.
Out of 72 registrations, 19 research proposals on selected themes were reviewed by a panel comprising faculty members of IIMK as well as other top institutes. Of these, six applicants were selected for an interview with a Board of academics. This was followed by a final round of interactions with the Director of IIM Kozhikode, after which the three PhD students were selected for the Scholars for Future Award.
The award includes a cash component, apart from the opportunity for the winners to present their proposals at the Pan IIM World Management Conference, to be hosted by IIMK. They will also get the opportunity to avail expert mentorship from the faculty of IIMK and guidance on getting papers published.
Ravikanth’s submission was in the category, ‘Theme addressing key priorities of India’. This submission was a development of his second year IS, which is now being further developed into an essay in his thesis. This project was guided by Prof. Srinivas Prakhya of the Marketing area of IIMB and Prof. Vedha Ponnappan, an alumnus of IIMB, who is currently a faculty member of IIM Udaipur.