Thothathri Raman | seaaservices

Transformational Leader in Business Education In India

Prof. Thothathri Raman Alwar, is a Transformational Leader in Business Education having pioneered the Business Schools Ranking & Rating for the first time in Business India as its Editor, Special Projects in the year 2000. The Ranking and Rating system he introduced brought to light some of the gems in the business education hidden away in their own regions and territories and spread all over the country. The single handed dedicated effort helped the country and its aspiring students recognize the brilliant opportunities they had in different parts of the country other than the handful institutions that were in the spotlight at that time.

Accreditation & Quality Assurance

Building on the Ranking and Rating that brought to light more than 3000 B-schools of prestige, some among them also nationally relevant institutions, Prof Raman also brought in International Accreditation awareness though his advocacy campaign started in the year 2008 through Standards for Educational Advancement & Accreditation (SEAA ) Trust, New Delhi after having served as a member of National Board of Accreditation (NBA) as a Management Accreditation committee member and understanding the aspects of Quality Building in B-schools.

Mission: Advancing Self-regulation with Accreditation
Objective: Helping Higher Education Institutions (HEI) to globally benchmark with the best in the class by adopting peer reviewed independent internationally accepted and independently validated accreditation standards offered by select elite Accreditation institutions

Thoththri Raman, is a Recipient of Frank V Mastrianna International Education Leader of the Year of IACBE.Award received at the Annual Conference of IACBE at San Diego in 2014. Recipient of Accreditation Leader of the year in 2015 by Higher Education Forum, Mumbai.

An Economist by education and practice, and being a passionate communicator, he has been impacting strongly on the Indian education front, through his interaction with the education leadership in Indian and global fora for the past 25 years. He brought on his advocacy platform, AACSB, AMBA, EFMD, ACBSP, IACBE, SAQS, Business Graduates Association (BGA), , ATHEA and British Accreditation Council. The first six mentioned have been represented in all the 17 annual conferences of SEAA without fail since the year 2009, an unparalleled feat in the world of accreditation. Standards for Educational Advancement & Accreditation (SEAA) Trust started in 2008 has now is completed its 18 years of International Accreditation Advocacy experience! We had more than 700 schools participating in our advocacy efforts and more than 190 international speakers presenting from our platform! Almost all the Internationally accredited schools had attended one or the other of our advocacy events

CAREER IN BUISNESS JOURNALISM

Prof. Thothathri Raman a pioneering business journalist with over four decades of experience. His career covered

Financial Express (Calcutta, Chennai),
Business World Magazine and The Hindu Newspaper (Both in Chennai )
The Economic Times (Bangalore)
The Observer of Business & Politics (Hyderabad, Bangalore and Trivandrum)
Indian Management of All India Management Association (Delhi)
HRD News Letter ( Delhi)
Business India fortnightly (Mumbai & Delhi)

Being a campaigner at heart with uncanny foresight, he had started writing about Alternative energy, particularly wind power taking advantage of the 7600 kilometers long coastline: Railway unbundling for private players participation; Industry near coalmines and washeries for pure coal: Inclusion of Indian Coffee on International Coffee Organisation portfolio of coffee that led to a boom in Indian coffee exports: Spices trading platform: commodity exchanges; Forex column for over a decade campaigning for free floating rupee: WTO awareness having tracked global trade from the days of General Scheme of Trade Preferences of the sixties, to General Agreement of Trade and Tariff (GATT), EU formation and introduction of the currency Euro; were among prominent campaigns.

EDUCATION

Mr Raman has a degree in Economics from Government Arts College Ooty and a post graduate degree in communication from Alagappa University. He also registered for his PhD in Guru Jambeswar University at Hisar, Haryana.

Books and Awards

Mr Raman is an accomplished Nationally Awarded Author with 27 Books to his credit. Knowledge Management, A Resource Book was awarded as the best Management Book by Delhi Management Association in the year 2000. The first e-book of India, a science fiction set in 26th century 'E-commerce @ Love " written by Mr Raman was published by FirstPrint.com a joint-venture between E-Bay and Amazon.

Association with Professional Bodies

A strong believer in building consensus, Prof Raman has not only brought all the International Accreditation systems together through accreditation advocacy, he has also been striving together all the industry institutions to bring a common agenda for Human development and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the country.

He has addressed on the platforms of almost all the professional Institutions of this country and is trying to bring together all of these on one platform for building human resource strategy for the youth of the country.

Prof Raman has been informally associated with many professional bodies in whose platform he has been speaking regularly:

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII southern region) - speaker
Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce (FICCI) – speaker book author
PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) speaker
All India Management Association (AIMA) where he was also the Editor of Indian Management Journal
Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS)
Education Promotion Society of India (one of ideators that created the institution)
Indian Association of Autonomous Business Schools IAABS (Founder member & Website owner)
National HRD Network ( National Board member for two years)
ISTD (speaker and award winner
Delhi Management Association (lifetime member)
Higher Education Forum (founder member)

International memberships *

CHEA International Quality Group (CIQG) Washington
International Association of Ecommerce Consultants, Atlanta
Peregrine Global Services Wyoming, USA (Academic partner)
APQN (Asia Pacific Quality Network ) Beijing
AAPBS Association of Asia Pacific Business Schools Seoul
Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME)
United Nations Global Compact India (UNGCI)

*Prof Raman and his organization SEAA Trust, New Delhi has taken these memberships at different times and UNGCI, PRME, AAPBS and APQN are current. Prof Raman is also a regular speaker and presenter in major national and international conferences on Higher Education Leadership.

Travel & Passion for Cycling

An avid traveler, a passion he shares with Smitha, his partner, the couple completed a 8000 km road journey before the Covid 19 outbreak to the Indian southern coasts starting from Delhi. The three week trip was preceded by one to Nepal in December 2018 by road. Several other road trips include trip around Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and southern States.

Cycling is Prof Raman ‘s passion and he owns a six year old active website www.cycletofuture.com set up specifically to promote cycle donation and senior cycle for health and peace.

THE QUALITY BUILDING JOURNEY CONTNUES!

Prof Raman and his Spouse are continuing their advocacy and quality building journey on the SEAA Trust, New Delhi platform introducing the need for adopting the PRIME (Principles for Responsible Management Education and Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations Global Compact organization as its longstanding member. The advocacy also encompasses promoting the ESG (Environment, Social & Governance) principles being promoted in corporates Institutions worldwide. In India Securities Exchanges Board of India (SEBI) has introduced these principles that have been adopted by more than 3000 companies. The journey continues.

A. THOTHATHRI RAMAN

Business Journalist, Editor, Author, Education Quality Evangelist, International Accreditation expert, Visiting Faculty, Adventure Cyclist, pole-vaulter and passionate speaker

AWARDS & ACCOLADES

The Frank V. Mastrianna Education Leader of the Year Award honors individuals who are exemplary higher education leaders and who have made significant contributions to an institution of higher education or a higher education organization

HEF Special Award for Quality in Higher Education

Higher Education Forum, based out of Navi Mumbai conferred its Special Award for Quality in Higher Education on A.Thothathri Raman, Chairman of SEAA Trust, New Delhi in 2015 to recognise his work on introducing international quality benchmarks through international accreditation in India.