Visionary with the Midas touch
A Living Legacy
Throughout his career, Dr. Pritam Singh believed that a strong vision combined with action, lay at the heart of great leadership—and that the pathway to management breakthrough lies in creative thinking as well as listening and learning from all. Through the Foundation, that conviction lives on.
Multifaceted Personality from the Start
Dr. Pritam Singh has been a compelling speaker, scholar, thinker and academic leader. His efforts have contributed significantly to shape Indian management education to help bring it closer to global standards. Parallelly, his reputation was established as an inspiring and wise guru to CMDs of companies, top directors of organizations and academic leaders heading many prestigious IIMs.
A thought leader with extraordinary insight, Dr. Pritam Singh is the author of ten academically reputed books, three of which are award winning. He has also written and published 60 research papers. His intellectual prowess was evident right from his younger days and this culminated in the award of the coveted Fulbright Fellowship, which resulted in him pursuing his MBA at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana Bloomington, USA.
Dr. Pritam Singh’s Vision
Many decades ago, he was the man who said that India will be the Talent hub for the whole world, and today this is indeed coming true before our own eyes. He considered bringing world class practices to Indian management education, imperative to build future leaders with a strong foundation, excellence focus and global perspective. He believed in building bridges between Industry and Academia and thereby bring about the fusion of knowledge with practice. He was firmly rooted in India, Indian culture and knowledge systems and would tirelessly propagate Indian wisdom by making it relevant to modern management.
Thought Leadership in Academia
Dr Pritam Singh was the visionary who first brought global accreditations for management schools to India. In fact, it was in early 2000s that MDI-Gurgaon became the first ever Indian management school to be accredited globally by the London based accreditation body AMBA – Association of MBAs. Leading management schools including the IIMs, subsequently followed.
Dr. Pritam Singh earned a great reputation as a turnaround Director, having transformed MDI-Gurgaon where he was Director from 1994 to 1998 and then again from 2003 to 2006. He strengthened IMI-Delhi into a national level institution when he became Director General from 2011 to 2014.
As Director of IIM Lucknow from 1998 to 2003, his visionary leadership and out of box solutions helped in taking the institution to the next orbit. He also contributed significantly to the social development of the surrounding villages building amity and cooperation in the local area.
The successful transformation of these schools has been attributed to Dr. Singh’s unique brand of highly inclusive people leadership, his innovative and out of box solutions, his inspiring persona and consummate interpersonal relationships across the ecosystem.
“He works with leaders who want to build institutions.”
– Mr. Manoj Kohli , Former Country Head – SoftBank India
Propagating Indian Values
Dr. Pritam Singh strived to bring world class practices to Indian management education and took Indian philosophy to the world through the power of his compelling lectures delivered to various Indian and global audiences including Chambers of Commerce in various countries notably Holland, France, Germany, Greece, Russia, UK, USA, Thailand, Mauritius, and Egypt, raising the image and reputation of India and Indian thought. In the era when English educated Indians shied away from native wisdom, he would boldly express his thoughts using both Indian and Western knowledge, thus generating pride and reducing the ambivalence which such Indians experienced in owning their heritage.
He has been well known for his gripping, challenging and inspiring speeches, global in perspective yet rooted in Indian values and wisdom. Few could remain unmoved or untouched by his thoughts, such was his power of communication and wisdom.
A Change Maker
Policy makers, industry and academic leaders, benefited from Dr. Pritam Singh’s tremendous insights about the state of the country, education, and about companies, given his large bandwidth of exposure to village society as well as to urban India and all the way to the USA and European countries.
During his ASCI Hyderabad (Administrative Staff College of India) days, he was chosen to organize and direct the
first retreat of the central ministers as part of Late Shri Rajiv Gandhi’s initiative to develop ministers as Transformational Leaders and Change Masters. His contributions to the government over the years, came full circle when he was chosen as the only Indian academic in the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s empowered committee for developing Institutes of Excellence. He made invaluable contributions in this role till his last days.
An Award Winning Leader
Dr. Pritam Singh’s distinguished services were acknowledged by the country when the President of India conferred on him the prestigious ‘Padma Shri’ in 2004 - a first for a professor and a serving Director in India in the field of management education. This made him a trailblazer in the field of management education. MIRBIS, the management school in Moscow, conferred him with the Global Thought Leader Award in 2005. He was the 19th global thought leader and the first Asian to be recognized by MIRBIS for his wisdom and erudition. In addition, he has been the recipient of more than a dozen prestigious national level awards.
Honoured by Association of Indian Management Schools
Prestigious Award by Vivekananda Foundation
Felicitated by TIE-UP California USA
Acharya Shrestha Award MIT Pune
Global Thought Leader 2006- 2007 by MIRBIS, Moscow
Honoured by National HRD Network
His Legacy
Dr. Pritam Singh worked tirelessly to transform institutions, inspire hundreds of thousands of people in academia and corporate sector, shape higher education, and mentor management schools. He contributed to raise the benchmark of management education by bringing international accreditation to India. He was a world class academician with an Indian soul and a bridge between industry and academia.
The Dr. Pritam Singh Foundation was created to take forward his thought and life lessons of Dr. Pritam Singh, ensuring that his gift—and his legacy—will endure in perpetuity.
“An inward-looking attitude works for meditation but if you have that approach for business, you are in trouble.”
