Prof Sriram, Executive Director, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai started off by welcoming one and all to the International Marketing Conference. He pointed out that Great Lakes wanted to position itself as a marketing school and ‘customer centricity’ was its theme. Dr Bala Balachandran, Honorary Dean and Founder, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai talked about the decision that he had to make when he started his pet project Great Lakes. He wanted Great Lakes to be known as a center of excellence in a functional area of management.

Dr Xavier, Professor of Marketing, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai began his talk by saying that it was an honor to be made the recipient of the Kotler Srinivasan Center for Marketing chairship. Marketing in India was not as evolved as in the US. He outlined his plans to develop a marketing portal which would allow people to interact with people like Dr Seenu and Dr Phillip Kotler. Dr Seenu Srinivasan, Professor of Marketing, Conference Organizer, Stanford University talked about the fact that the conference delegates had come from mostly the US, Canada as well as Australia and other parts of the world and that this conference had created a community of marketing professors who could take marketing to the next level in India.

Dr Dipak Jain, Dean, Kellogg School of Management talked about his days at Tejpur, Assam at a time when India was backward and it took a long time to for letters to reach abroad as well as secure scholarships for post graduate programs. He talked about his academic journey. He talked about the fact that Kellogg was known for Marketing and had managed to establish itself as a brand which he said was lacking with the Indian B Schools. He also talked about the opportunity for Great Lakes to create a marketing brand in India. He said that it was important to take risks and do cutting edge research and to be known for creating something new and revolutionary. The challenge ahead of you is never tougher than the force behind you.