How do you teach a class filled with the smartest management students in the United States and simultaneously run a call centre and a second management institute in Chennai ? and still get a full night?s sleep?

?When you?ve been teaching for 32 years it isn?t all that tough,? says Professor Bala V Balachandran with a broad ear-to-ear grin. Before you jump to the conclusion that he?s taking it easy or neglecting his students, he quickly throws in the rider that he?s still winning Best Teacher awards at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

It?s certainly a feat that wouldn?t have been possible before the advent of e-mail and the other instant communications methods of the Internet era. Two years ago, Balachandran put the building blocks in place for his Great Lakes School of Management in Chennai and this year the first batch of students of 125 are being hired and inducted into the corporate world.

Sitting in Chicago, Balachandran spends two hours each day, micro-managing the institute and sending out e-mails to all the students. He?s not, he insists, a typical management professor who tosses an idea over his shoulder and then vanishes to his next project. ?I run it like a benevolent dictator. This is my baby,? he says feelingly.

If running a management school by remote control isn?t enough, there?s also Allsec Technologies, a thriving four-year-old call centre in Chennai set up with three other partners. The call centre has 2,200 staffers taking calls mostly from American customers and it handles companies like Ford, Dell and Dun & Bradstreet. Balachandran plays the role of influential US-based salesman for the company, putting in the occasional word with his powerful ex-students, in case they are considering outsourcing. The firm may go public around the middle of the year.

Balachandran who went to America in 1967 with the government-decreed $8 in his pocket, reckons that he has been a pioneer of sorts. He studied statistics from Anamallai University and then studied engineering in the US. He then turned out an award-winning thesis for his operations research Ph.d from Carnegie Mellon and immediately got seven job offers. He finally accepted an offer to be an associate professor at Northwestern. He added to the string of degrees by doing his CPA (the equivalent of chartered accountancy).

Back in 1973, he was the first Indian to be hired at Kellogg and he insists that, ?If I had messed it up, there might not have been others.? Clearly he didn?t ?mess it up? because today, the dean of Kellogg is an Indian, Dipak Jain and 20 out of 118 teachers are Indians. Out of that six are distinguished professors like Balachandran (he?s the J.L. Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Information Systems and Decision Sciences). For several years now, Kellogg has been one of America?s top-rated management schools. For the record, Balachandran?s brother teaches management at Stanford and one son teaches at Columbia.

Balachandran returns frequently to India nowadays and this time round he?s shepherding a group of 53 management students from Kellogg who want to take a closer look at the country and its fast-changing corporate world. Having Balachandran as their guide and mentor has ensured that the students get the red carpet treatment ? they?ve met the prime minister and had meetings in the Planning Commission. They are also being hosted to dinner by the CII and the board of Godrej Industries. Balachandran does consultancy work for Godrej and for a string of other Indian companies including TCS.

For Balachandran, the re-discovery of India began in the 1990s when India began opening up its economy. In 1992 he helped to organise a conference in the US at which the speakers included Manmohan Singh. Since then, he has stepped up the frequency of his visits and now flies in and out three or four times a year. He?s convinced that the country must turn its attention immediately to educating the rural poor ? and, ideally make a profit at the same time. ?If five-year-olds are not educated they will be the illiterates of 2020,? he says.

In all this, Balachandran insists that the last thing on his mind is money. He has sunk Rs 1 crore into the Great Lakes Management School and says it will be run as a not-for-profit company. Since both his sons are doing well (the second one is a pulmonary expert) they don?t need the cash either. ?In the end I will have only two names,? he says philosophically. ?One is dead and the other is body.?

He?s confident that Great Lakes will make its name quickly in the Indian management scene. Two years ago when Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa offered him 30 acres of land in Chennai, Balachandran turned down her offer. He insisted that he only needed half that space. Since then, he has moved swiftly to ensure that this is an institute with a difference. About 32 per cent of the students are women and everyone must learn Chinese as a part of their course. Balachandran has even taught two full courses at the institute. The students call him ?Uncle Bala?. ?I ask them to call me that. It should be like a family. Let us have a different culture,? he says.

As a management guru, is he making predictions about the future and where India will be by 2020? Says Balachandran, ?I can only try and answer where the world will be in 2008. My horizon is three years. If I can forecast three years I am supergod.?

Photograph by Rupinder Sharma