Srivatsa Krishna, ED & CEO - South Asia, Dubai World Group, Visits Great Lakes Institute

Original Article

The Class of 2009 at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, recently attended a scintillating session of power-talk by Mr. Srivatsa Krishna, currently the Executive Director & CEO, South Asia, of Dubai World Group Company, one of the largest infrastructure companies globally.

Srivatsa topped the Indian Civil Services Examination in 1994 and joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). He went on to do his full-time MBA from Harvard Business School, and an Advanced Executive Program from The Wharton School of Business.

Before Harvard, he was part of the core team of the Government of Andhra Pradesh, and was responsible for some of the key investment promotion and e-government initiatives there. In fact the Cyberabad phenomenon could be attributed to him. He was the single most influencing factor to the then Chief Minister, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu. Mr. Krishna is also a Staff Member - Strategy, Finance & Risk Management Vice-Presidency at World Bank in Washington D.C.

He is currently co-authoring a case study as part of an ISR with Prof. Michael Porter on Technology Clusters & Economic Development in India. A noted columnist and writer, he is currently working on a book on Leadership and e-Government Strategy. He has been honored as one of the Top 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum at Davos. Other past awardees include Bill Gates, Tony Blair, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Michael Dell to name a few. Srivatsa is also a member of McKinsey & Company's Global Infrastructure Advisory Board, which is one of the most influential consulting practices in the world today.

The next couple of hours took us into a realm of hope, dreams, despondence, optimism, helplessness, all put into one drink. It was amazing. The talk started with the current state of India - the competitive advantage, the Information Technology edge, and the general scheme of things; put across in a positive light. And then came the killer - he took us through the Chinese statistics. The sheer progress that China has made in the past couple of decades has been breathtaking. He went on talking about a part of China which, once upon a time was tagged - deep ditch; now the ‘barren land’ houses more than three thousand and five hundred sky-scrapers! That’s more than the total sky-scrapers of Detroit, San Fransisco, Seattle and New York put together. In fact, what the US has done in the past 40 years, China has done that in 20 years. That itself speaks volumes about the growth rate of the country. Simply put, it’s humungous.