Mentors

Mr. Anurag Thakurta

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Mr. V. S. Lakshmanan BSc (Tech) MMS LLB

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Mr. Gautam Patnaik

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Mr. Harish Prabhu

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Mr. Amit Wagh

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Mr. Anand M

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Mentorship Registration Form

Dear Alumni,

Your experience can shape careers. Join us in mentoring fellow alumni and helping them achieve their goals in their chosen career paths.

How much time can you realistically devote to mentoring per week?

Eligibility & Role

The NMIMS Mentorship Program invites alumni with 15+ years of professional, entrepreneurial, or business experience to guide students and fellow alumni. Mentors are expected to bring not just expertise, but maturity, perspective, and a genuine intent to enable growth.

An effective mentor demonstrates strong listening skills, empathy, and the ability to offer clear, strategic direction. The role goes beyond advice. Mentors help mentees think critically, navigate decisions, and access meaningful networks and opportunities, while maintaining the highest standards of ethics and confidentiality.

Program Overview

The program is designed to connect experienced alumni with mentees seeking direction in careers, entrepreneurship, or business challenges. Mentees may include final-semester MMS students or alumni looking for structured guidance.

Engagements begin through the Mentorship Cell portal, where mentees can explore mentor profiles and apply. Each mentorship starts with a discussion to define objectives, scope, and timelines, and may continue based on mutual alignment.

Engagement Framework

Mentorship is structured yet flexible. Each engagement runs for a minimum of three months and may be extended by mutual consent. Interactions can be weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, depending on availability and need, and are primarily remote unless in-person meetings are essential.

All engagements are pro-bono, with no financial transactions permitted within the NMIMS framework. Progress is documented to ensure continuity and effectiveness.

Mentor Profile & Capabilities

The program prefers NMIMS postgraduate alumni with significant leadership experience, particularly entrepreneurs or senior corporate professionals (CEO/CXO/Business Head level).

Mentors are expected to bring strong business acumen, especially in areas such as:
• Business viability and planning
• Go-to-market strategies
• Financial structuring and capital planning.

A sound understanding of business and finance is critical, as mentees often seek guidance on high-stakes decisions.

Core Mentorship Pillars

The mentorship experience is anchored in four key roles:

Counsel: Providing strategic direction and helping mentees navigate challenges with clarity and structure.
Capital: Guiding on financial planning, resource requirements, and connecting with potential investors where relevant.
Connect: Enabling access to industry networks, partnerships, and opportunities.
Co-Creation: Acting as a thought partner to refine ideas, validate decisions, and strengthen execution.

Governance & Ethics

To ensure quality and alignment, mentors may be onboarded through an interaction with a panel comprising senior alumni and faculty. All mentors are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest upfront.

The mentorship relationship must remain rooted in trust, transparency, and a non-commercial intent. Confidentiality, mutual respect, and ethical conduct are non-negotiable.

Reporting & Note

The Mentorship Cell will periodically review progress and may document successful engagements as case studies.

Selection as a mentor does not guarantee mentee assignment; mentees will apply based on alignment, objectives, and availability.

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Anurag Thakurta

Commercial & Strategy Leader | Mentor

Builds scalable businesses through sharp analytics, clear strategy, and
strong people leadership.

Anurag Thakurta is a commercial and strategy leader with 12+ years of experience across healthcare, consumer, and automotive sectors in India and Southeast Asia. He brings together analytical rigor, strategic clarity, and strong people leadership to drive business growth and transformation.

He currently leads Commercial Operations for India & South Asia at Abbott Core Diagnostics, with end-to-end responsibility across sales, marketing, and operational strategy. He has also served in interim country leadership roles, representing the business at global and APAC forums during periods of transition.

Anurag has a consistent track record of delivering results in complex environments—driving growth, improving profitability, and building execution discipline across teams.

Previously, at Novartis India, he led the cardiovascular portfolio through a loss-of-exclusivity phase, successfully transitioning a flagship brand into a high-performing branded generics play while sustaining market leadership.

Earlier, as part of Accenture Strategy, he worked on large-scale commercial and digital transformation programs across India and Southeast Asia, and was part of the core team involved in the launch of JSW Paints.

He is known for his ability to translate data into strategy, and strategy into execution, while aligning teams and stakeholders to deliver outcomes at scale.

Anurag has been actively mentoring management recruits at Novartis and Abbott, supporting their growth, capability building, and career development. He has also received multiple industry and organizational recognitions, including the OPPI Marketing Excellence Award.

V S Lakshmanan  BSc( Tech) MMS LLB – I consider myself as a rare few who has traversed decades of career experience over three innings viz Corporate , Business & now Professional.

My journey began when I graduated out of UDCT ( Now ICT) as a textile technologist but found that the industry had been marred by textile strikes and very less opportunities, so I had to be flexible to change track and move to do the Master’s in Management course MMS from NMIMS. Was maybe the first batch which ventured into Management from UDCT. Passing out from NMIMS with a Marketing specialisation , saw me being picked by LUPIN group for its diversification project in coated fabrics. Had the fortune to work with two best corporate professionals, one from IIM A Mr B S Prakash and the other a brilliant grassroot trained marketing genius Mr Sashi Das who is considered the King of luggage industry having led to Aristocrat surpassing VIP in brand volumes for close to three years and the Bhishmapithah  of the discounting strategy in India which is still a prevalent practice in India. Honing my skills under them, helped launch Lupin into the coated fabric field with wide exposure to areas of hardcore grass root selling, product management, product launch,  channel & influencer roles & micromanagement for a successful journey.

Subsequently moved to a Product management role in Eureka Forbes. Launched the Aquaguard musical successfully. The key contributions and learnings were in man management. Eureka Forbes is a highly successful model in Direct selling and understanding it and making a success is the forte of very few companies.

Moving into a higher management role in strategy and key decision making at Bhor Industries handled a few product lines including coated fabrics and PVC flooring to make them key and large brands in the market.

Being noticed as a success of a brand launch, brought me to Uniplas group which was the first to launch spunbond nonwovens in the country. Was majorly responsible for seed marketing & relaunching in the Indian market and thereafter grew into  a huge commodity product in linings and packaging, a success strategy of  usage positioning and gap-substitution as a key success factor.

Leaving the comfort of a Corporate Director Marketing role to the calling of  businessmen in late nineties, set up an Indenting and importing firm, with exclusive agency contract from Samsung group( now oven business). Over a decade set up an import and marketing agency house successfully growing business pan India  till the floods of 2005 brought the house down. Lost huge inventories in the floods forcing a huge scaledown in business. Losses, though recovered from insurance claims, went through an individual  phase of “no risk for me” and sabbatical.

In the third innings, I reinvented myself by pursuing a degree in law to satiate my urge to move into the social legal field. However I sailed into commercial litigation law and today I am a successful lawyer practising civil, arbitration, criminal ,consumer and cooperative fields. Along the way pursuing my past passion, I am mentoring an MSME having turned a lossmaking unit on the verge of closing down  to a successful profitable unit in a span of one of half years.

My forte is in areas of new product launches, transferring micromanagement skills and turning around companies.and legal interfaces.

Businesses today can draw on my experience and skills since there is a fine line between success and failure and one ought to identify it to succeed.

Gautam Patnaik – Gautam is an MSc Chemistry graduated from NMIMS in the first batch of MMS ’81-83.

He has over 42 years of  multi-disciplinary work and business experience in sectors such as Aluminium manufacturing and downstream products, IT training services, Process Quality consulting, Marketing higher education programs for international providers, launching formal K12 Education projects, designing and implementing K12 learning platform, providing infrastructure ancillary services for best in class Fire protection and safety solutions.

As a Lead Education Quality Assessor he partnered the Tata Group and CII Institute of Quality to establish the “Dr. J. J. Irani Tata Steel Education Excellence Model” which was successfully implemented in a large number of schools and showcased to Principals across the country through CII Conferences till the eventual launch of Quality Council of India for education excellence in schools and NAAC for higher education in India.

Thereafter he launched his own businesses to engage with growth oriented sectors and capitalize on emerging new opportunities. He has been a professional cricketer playing for the state, university and national levels, and has a keen sports business sense.

He has a strong focus on opportunity assessment/evaluation, process orientation and governance besides being a people oriented and ESG sensitive leader.

Harish Prabhu –  Experienced Banking, FinTech, Financial Services Professional & Investor with 3 1/2 + decades of diverse & successful

leadership and senior-management experience (as CEO and Executive Board level) at Global Banks in India/South Asia i.e.;

JPMorgan Chase Bank (US) / Credit Agricole IndoSuez (French), Mashreq Bank (UAE), TAIB Bank (GCC) and at leading Indian

FinTechs – across Lending including Leasing, Digital Payments / Non-Digital (Cash – ATM MSPs) / Remittance –

domestic/cross-border).

  • A Specialist with Expertise in:
  • Investment Banking (M&A & Capital Raising Advisory)
  • Cross Border/Domestic, Digital Wholesale & Retail Payments domain – having worked extensively with leading Global

& Indian Banks and FinTechs in the “Digital Payments Domain” (including Cash Currency ATMs).

  • Business Restructuring and Corporate Turnaround strategy formulation and implementation
  • Was also amongst the youngest MD/CEO’s of a Scheduled Commercial Bank in India.

Since the past 11+ years, worked extensively in the Indian Fintech/Banking space (including as an

Investor/Advisor/Operator), leading & driving startup businesses – across Strategy Creation/Implementation, Business

Building/Development, Operations and Turnarounds, both from Board & Executive Management level.

Have driven the following businesses at Board, Advisory and Executive levels at startups in:

  • Electric 2 & 3-Wheeler Lending/Leasing
  • Healthcare Delivery & MSME Equipment Leasing
  • Travel & FX Remittances platform
  • Digital Banking Payments Technology solutions platform for Semi-Urban & Rural Banks in India
  • ATMs Managed Services & Cash Management Services
  • Technology Investment Banking
  • Currently, lead and manage Finessense Advisors Pvt Ltd (an Investments/Advisory firm) concentrating on Capital Raising,

M&A Advisory and Investments for disruptive technology and innovation led, high-growth MSME entrepreneur-led businesses in India.

  • Also an investor in various Technology-led startups in FinTech, AI, DeepTech, DefenseTech & NanoTech Indian and global companies.

Amit Wagh- Amit began his professional journey as a Senior Consultant at PwC Consulting. After six years in this role, he progressed to become Managing Director at PwC Consulting and later served as Managing Director at Accenture Strategy. He subsequently held the position of Vice President at Cognizant before joining KPMG India as a Senior Advisor, where he served for five years. Currently, Amit is the Co-founder and Partner at Navigature Consulting.True to its name, Navigature Consulting was established with the objective of enabling clients to “navigate the future.” The firm was founded to address critical gaps within the consulting industry and is guided by three core principles: 

Rediscovering true partnership through the active engagement of senior partners.

Customizing global perspectives and executive insights to address the evolving challenges faced by CEOs and CXOs.

Delivering end-to-end impact, from conceptualization through execution

Amit is focused on building Navigature into a highly differentiated consulting firm. With over 25 years of consulting experience, Amit brings deep expertise across growth strategy, digital transformation, productivity and operational excellence, data-driven insights, post-merger integration, and technology implementation. He has worked extensively with clients across India, North America, the UK, and the UAE.

Linkedin Profile- https://www.linkedin.com/in/amit-wagh-4855a4106/

Anand M– Anand M began his career with L&T and subsequently joined Standard Chartered Bank, where he spent eight years. He then moved into the insurance sector, working with Tata AIG and Tata AIA before joining SBI Life Insurance as Executive Director Marketing, a role he held for two years. In 2017, he was appointed President and Chief Distribution Officer, a position he continues to hold.

A senior professional with over 35 years of experience, Anand M brings strong general management expertise as a member of the Executive Committee. His responsibilities include shaping overall organizational strategy, managing business P&L, and leading country-level business channels through the development and execution of strategic plans. He has a proven track record of building and leading high-performing teams within the insurance industry, along with extensive cross-functional experience in retail banking.

Linkedin Profile- https://www.linkedin.com/in/anand-m-1283712/

Mentorship Registration Form

Dear Alumni,

Your experience can shape careers. Join us in mentoring fellow alumni and helping them achieve their goals in their chosen career paths.

How much time can you realistically devote to mentoring per week?
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