Nripen Bharali remembers...

This has brought back some of the old, sweet memories of our two years in IIMA and at the same time rekindled the feeling of loss and sadness that I personally felt when I learnt about Labdhi's untimely death.

I was in Section C of my PGP batch and was generally a happy-go-lucky guy. I felt generally lucky if I could read a case before going to the class. But for Labdhi's class I did make some special efforts, mostly because of his cutting remarks (always with good intention, now I realise) if you were caught unprepared for any particular case. I had only one opportunity to really go to the board and give my views on a particular case during the entire term and I recall with pride that the great professor did respond with the remark 'this could work'. That to me was like scoring an A.

But I had some close interactions with your dad when I had gone to the institute for a short term course on Management during my professional days. What amazed me was though so many new students join every year, he did remember most of my class mates and had very good things to say about the batch. He also took special care to introduce me as his old stident to the other participants of the class. He talked about his children over dinner one day with a lot of fatherly pride. He also promised to visit Assam (from where I come) and the North East and I had offered to invite him officially. Unfortunately that visit never materialised.

*Nripen Bharali was a student of LRB in 1980-82 and at an Executive program at IIMA. He currently works with Oil India, Assam.

PGP 1988 remembers....

Sharad Agarwal remembers...

Labdhi Bhandari is someone I remember for telling me how not sell a thing cheap if it has quality.

This is the thing which was at the back of my mind when we launched schools in Tier I cities in India where I have always told my team what Prof Bhandari had said during the class.

*Sharad Agarwal was a student of LRB

Baba Shiv remembers...

Labdhi was clearly my inspiration to get into academia in the first place. I just wanted to be like him! Who wouldn't?

My memories of the specifics in the classroom discussions with Labdhi have faded. But two things stand out. One is his amazing ability to push my thinking in ways that I find hard to replicate. It still fills me with awe about how his simple questions like "so?" tickled my brain cells.

The second was when I went to his office in our second year to get his advice on my becoming an academic. He was extremely gracious and was so different than in the class room. He gave me tons of advice, the most important being: "If you are in it for the money, forget about it. If you are in it for the sheer joy of learning, do it." He was also very gracious to offer writing a reco letter for me, but I was not so fortunate owing to the tragic end.

Labdhi will forever be etched in my memory. An inspiration to so many

including me.

*Baba Shiv was a student of LRB and is a Professor of Marketing at Stanford.

Sanjay Gupta remembers...

Labdhi Bhandari was without exception the most outstanding teacher I had the privilege to school with. Folks with outstanding memories have narrated incidents but my most vivid memories are of him casually leaning against his desk and saying "So?".

Here we would be having worked our tails off and thinking that we had the most insightful analysis and he would hear us with a deadpan face - at the end of which would come the predictable "So?". It was this series of So's through a session which pushed us to think and stretch ourselves and bring the best into those classes. That ability of his to draw us out and our best was his gift.

I also had an opportunity to intern with him post our two years. In those six months I saw the amazing diversity of Dr. Bhandari. Whether he was consulting on free trade, or sitting on the board of Cement Corporation, he was on the ball and working with the fervor of someone on a mission. His stamina was exceptional and his grip on the diversity of his engagements remarkable.

The interactions with Dr. Bhandari are cherished memories which always remind me that with persistence and continuous refinement, the shine only gets brighter.

*Sanjay Gupta was a student of LRB

Ravi Sreedharan remembers...

Anything we write/ say will not do justice to the contribution of Labdhi Bhandari to the students who graduated from IIMA - and, I believe, not just the people who went into marketing. His ideas/ teachings had a broader value than just Marketing.

If I reflect on my days at IIM A and think of the people who made the biggest difference to me - they were: first and foremost - the students. Most of what I learnt from IIMA was not really in the class rooms - it was in discussions/ arguments (of the 'argumentative Indian' kind) with batchmates. Even in the class room, it was in case discussions with class mates.

After the class mates, it was a few fabulous professors like Labdhi (and, Labdhi stands tall among these few too). Having decided very early at IIMA to pursue a career in Marketing, the few classes I attended were all concentrated in Marketing. I believe that our batch produced some great marketing minds because we had the great fortune of Labdhi taking us through first and second year. I have no doubt when I say that most of what I have learnt/retained from IIM A are attributable to Labdhi.

On the last class of labdhi in PGP 1, we had an open house with him and we were giving him feedback. One of the students said to him "why are you so nasty with us in case discussions. You sometimes make us feel so foolish?".. and his reply was "I would rather you look foolish in this class room than when you are out there in the actual market place"! .... And that he was outside the classroom an absolutely warm person is etched in my mind with the Holi day hug that Santy has described below.

He always left an indelible nugget/ idea of marketing in our minds:

1. Discussing the MKT strategy for a business to business marketing case: one of the students leapfrogged into how the company should have a lot of sales men and focus on below the line marketing, etc, etc. and, Labdhi wanted us to first try and understand what the market characteristics were and why (if at all) would it be attractive to the company being discussed. In his unmatched way he said "Mr X, you are discussing how you can do well and score good grades in IIMA, whereas, the rest of the class is trying to understand whether you should be here in the first place. Can’t tell you how that has remained with me to date - first try and understand the opportunity clearly before jumping into strategies.

2. Discussing Gujarat Tourism, Labdhi must have repeated at least 10 or 15 times - "what are they selling? what are they selling?? " .... and all of us went "Gujarat" (which recd some witty comments from Labdhi), some said "The Natural Beauty of Gujarat" some said "Tourism" etc etc. ........ I can't tell you how foolish and enlightened I felt when he said "They are selling Hotel Rooms Goddamit!" .... this combined with what he taught us in MKT 1 about Fulfilling Needs are enough to make most students better marketers than the average MKT MGRs in today's world.

3. I can't remember the case study - it was about pricing some tablets. The case study was on Pricing - and, there were several groups who had to work overnight and come back with their price recommendations for the tablet. Every group was asked next morning a simple question "What Price would you charge". Some Groups had done a lot of work on the costs, the competitive prices, etc etc. .... this was a real case and the real company had charged (if I am not mistaken) 3 times the highest price that was proposed. The point that Labdhi wanted us to learn was that Pricing has to be based on Customers' expectations/ value association/ price-quality correlations, etc etc and not just based on your own metrics like cost, margin or for that matter what competition charges.

You will love the two times this has worked for me - my cousin in Chennai (not from IIMA) had been trying to sell his old scooter for Rs 500 and was struggling to get rid of it for a long time. I suggested he price it at Rs 3,000 and it was sold within a few days! (Pricing also creates a 'quality' perception.... you can imagine why he has not stopped telling his friends about the Marketing Geniuses that IIMA Produces). In my second year at work, I was developing a strategy for Reynolds Pens. One of the key parts of the strategy was to price it above any other ball-pen in the market. (this was combined with the way we re-positioned Reynolds Pens and the category itself, etc) ... their sales went from INR 400,000 p.a to INR 40,00,00,000 in 2 years time.

LABDHI IS UNDOUBTEDLY THE BEST TEACHER I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE ACROSS IIT (IT-BHU) AND IIM Ahmedabad. He was:

EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT

VERY SHARP

VERY WITTY

WARM

*Ravi Sreedharan was a student of LRB

Vijay Santhanam remembers...

It is my honor to share memories of Labdhi Bhandari. Without the faintest shadow of doubt, in my life, Labdhi is:

1. The best teacher I have experienced;

2. The best marketing brain I know, and I don't say that lightly for I worked in P&G, the best and biggest consumer products company and I have met three P&G CEOs;

3. The person from whom I learnt the most from IIM-A and have used the most in my working experience of twenty years.

It was our huge fortune that he took four courses (Marketing I, Marketing II, PPM and International Marketing) in the last batch he taught. His tragic death in the air crash caused an massive loss not only to his family and friends but generations of potential marketing heads of companies. Most of my batch mates and even my closest friends thought (and perhaps think so even now) that I was wasting my timing in IIM-A and that I didn't learn much - nothing can be farther than truth. It is true that I bunked many of the classes in IIM-A, but I attended most of the Maths and Marketing classes. And, importantly, even if I had a hang-over I never missed a class of Labdhi's. I have no physical notes or papers of what I learnt from him. I do not need papers - it is all there in my mind. Every single time I think of a marketing issue, my first internal question is, "What would Labdhi has thought?2 Allow me to elaborate with a few examples.

1. What is the key issue in the case "Gujarat Tourism?" Empty rooms in Choward. Gujarat Tourism thought that it was a great idea to make a package - Gir, Somnath and Choward. Why did that fail? Consumers are very smart; they think about the weakest link in the package. When I was the Marketing Director of China P&G, my team wanted to have a promotion of a strong sku with a weak one. I told this lesson from Labdhi but asked them to try so they can learn in real world. The results were ok. We did a second promotion - with two strong skus and the success was incredible.

2. What is the key issue in the case "EPC vs. MPC" an one page case? A competitor was playing with lower price and our company lost some volume. What is the solution? All of us in the class wanted the price to be reduced to help contain the volume loss. Labdhi said, "If your competitor was to play price differentiation, offer it you him in a platter by raising your prices! You will lose some volume but you will maintain or even grow your value share and profits. And he left the class room, as typically he used to. I have used this lesson many times, very profitably, the last time in 2006-7.

3. What is the key lesson from the case "Gujarat Strapping?" You need to seed fruit trees that will give you returns in the long-term but you need to seed flowers too that will return your investment within a year -remember, you need the cashflow. I have used this lesson many times.

He was not just a brilliant marketer and teacher but a great human being. On Holi, as few of us met him in the morning. I still remember the white kurta he was wearing. He opened his arms widely and hugged us in a warm embrace. That from "The Tiger in the class" this was beyond surprising. Labdhi was a great man. You should be immensely proud of him.

Vijay Santhanam was a student of LRB

Rajnish Agarwal remembers...

To echo some of the sentiments expressed, Labdhi for me was the best professor I have ever known. His insights, clarity of thought and expression and precision of his language were just peerless. It was a joy to listen to him and learn from his experience. We were truly privileged to have him teach us.

Labdhi carried a deep sense of responsibility in our development and he was very conscientious of his role and impact to that effect. He was great at setting the tone and direction of the conversation and i am reminded of an anecdotal moment in his very first class.

Labdhi walked in and we barely said good-morning. We just sat huddled together, partly in fear of his reputation and partly in awe!, overwhelmed I think with his presence and his serious demeanor. After a few pregnant minutes of uneasy silence, Labdhi said, 'So, who is going to discuss the case?' .. We all looked at each other for the 'sacrificial one'. He then repeated, 'Has anyone read the case?' ... to which a brave one amongst us, sat right at the very back of the class sat up and said ' Sir, would it not be better if you introduced yourself to us first?' .... Labdhi, composure personified, looked at him and said 'Would that help solve the case?' That set us up for the rest of his class and the term, I think! He was a great mind, took a lot of pride in what he did and a truly wonderful person.

*Rajnish Agarwal was a student of LRB

Rohini Chowdhury remembers...

I too, have very clear memories of Prof Labdhi Bhandari. Unlike Ravi and Santy and most of the PGP '88 batch, I do not have very fond memories of our two years on campus. There are only a few memories that stand out, and Labdhi Bhandari and his classes stand out even among those.

I had decided to take Marketing because I found very early on that I enjoyed its people-orientation. I was absolutely overjoyed to hear that Prof Labdhi Bhandari would be one of my teachers. Stories of his brilliance as a teacher were legion, and I couldn't wait to attend his classes. I was not disappointed. Of all the lectures I have attended at IIM-A, his were the ones I enjoyed most. I adored him, and, like many others in our batch and before, I was also terrified of him! Impeccably and elegantly dressed, quiet, almost bored in his manner, he would effeortlessly take our carefully prepared cases apart. And we would leave his class, wondering at his genius, haven taken away with us another piece of marketing knowledge almost without realising that we had done so.

When it was feedback time, he walked into our classroom, and asked us - So tell me, what can I do to improve these lectures? (I don't remember his exact words, but this was the sense of the question he asked). Of course, he was met with dead silence as we froze in our seats. He looked inquiringly round the class. A full five minutes must have passed before one brave soul spoke up. He said, 'Sir, if you could, like, smile every five minutes or so, it would help.' 'Very well,' agreed Prof Bhandari. And, believe it or not, for the next one hour he DID smile - every five minutes by the clock!!! Of course, his smiles reduced us to nervous wrecks so that at the end of the class we begged him to stop smiling! We NEVER asked him to smile again - we were grateful for him, the way he was! Today, looking back, I am in hysterics! What a marvellous way to put us in our place!

When the grades came, I found that Labdhi had given me an A. That A matters to me more than any other A I have ever received in any other course of study that I have undertaken. Praise from Labdhi meant something, and was meant to be treasured.

Like Ravi, I remember the news of the plane crash. I was at work, and a colleague told me about it, and about Labdhi's death. I couldn't believe it. And when it sank in, my reaction was one of irreparable loss - we had lost a brilliant teacher, the world had lost a brilliant mind.

*Rohini Chowdhury was a student of LRB

Prof. Sudas Roy remembers...

I think it was sometime around 1983, when the Indian Tea Board decided to engage IIM Calcutta to advise them on planning a country-of-origin promotion campaign to promote value-added packet teas to selected international markets. A team of experts was constituted and we invited Prof.Labdhi Bhandari from IIM Ahmedabad to join the team. He promptly accepted the invitation and for next few years, till his untimely death, became a friend, counsel, guide and idea generator for me and our team members.

My friendship with Labdhi was essentially based on this particular interface and hence I cannot claim to know him well enough in a multi-layered sense that a long and deep friendship brings to explain many nuances of one’s personality.
However, through professional meetings, composing drafts of reports or while visiting abroad to study the markets, we had enough opportunities to interact professionally and come closer to each other as friends.

By the time Labdhi joined our team, he was already a hotshot Marketing expert and a rising star in the firmament of Indian academia. He was becoming quite legendary within the IIMA community as a great teacher and administrator. Indian industry opened its door to him to seek his valuable advice on many of their problems. In short, he carried an aura about him and scored high on the academic glamour quotient.

My first impression about him confirmed all that I heard about him. In the initial meetings with the Ministry of Commerce and the Tea Board officials, he came across as a quietly confident person who knew what he was saying and commanded an unspoken respect from his audience. What struck me as remarkable was his quick ability to think laterally and come up with an out-of-box idea to untangle a knotty intellectual question. Given his relatively young age, his ability to see the “big picture” was a little awe-inspiring. If I have to describe my initial reaction to him, I would put it as “intellectual respect” which he commanded with an effortless ease.

Labdhi was a thorough professional who helped our team to remain on course for the main deliverables and provided creative options on how to achieve those.
In my interactions with him, I also found him to be a person who could express the most complex ideas and concepts through an economy of expressions. This spoke very highly about his superior communication skills and an ability to grasp an idea. In short, Labdhi was a person with high clarity of mind and ability to share his ideas.

We visited Gulf countries, Egypt and Jordan a couple of times in connection with this project. During these visits, we came closer and I started discovering other facets of his personality. He had this capacity to make friends without much fuss and overt sentimentality. If he once accepted some one as his peer then he could be very easy going, witty and wise friend-cum-counsel.

Due to passage of time, and my poor habit of not maintaining a diary, many anecdotes involving Labdhi are lost for ever from my memory. However, what typically stood out was his composure and a sense of not losing control even in times of problems. I recall the day when we two were ensconced in the IIMC city office for a meeting to prepare a draft report when the news about Mrs.Indira Gandhi’s assassination reached us. I was watching Labdhi closely and didn’t notice any sign of anxiety about his own plans and programs or his personal security. Chaos was already reigning outside but he was cool as a cucumber.

I was spending some part of my summer break at Ranchi in my sister’s house. I was lazily watching some T.V. Program and then suddenly the news was interrupted and the telecaster announced a plane crash in Ahmedabad. Like a worst nightmare turning true, Labdhi`s name featured in the list of fatalities.

His departure was so sudden, inexplicable and untimely that we were left stunned.

Today, Labdhi is no more but his legacy endures. With his sharp intellect, insight and maturity, he put Indian marketing academics on the global scholarly map and did an immense service to his alma mater, IIM Ahmedabad, in terms of building its “Brand Equity”. I personally remain greatly touched and enriched by our short association which was so cruelly cut short.

*Prof. Sudas Roy worked with LRB as advisor to the Tea Board in the 1980s. He is a Professor of Marketing at IIM, Kolkata

Trilochan Sastry remembers...

I was also Labdhi's PGP student. He took only two classes for us, but it is still in my mind. Mainly, I got a few things from it: that he had a very high quality mind, very incisive and insightful, and conveyed that marketing required a lot of skill and intellectual content. He was, of course, a very good teacher.

But, it is one long conversation I had with him as part of a student project that I still remember. We had a course called "WAC – written analysis and communication". My friend, Raju Vir, and I went to interview your father at your home. He laid out a plan of action for alleviating rural poverty through marketing. I could not understand him and came away thinking that he was biased because he was from the marketing field. How could marketing solve rural poverty problems?

Today, I run an NGO that helps about 3000 farmers in tribal and drought prone areas. And we use marketing as the central point of our intervention. Today I also believe what your father told me back in 1981. He had, therefore, a much wider vision of the world and his own profession than people understood. He was able to see things and opportunities that most of us miss. And perhaps he had a wider concern than the corporate sector, where as you know, he was highly respected.

*Trilochan Sastry was a student of LRB in 1981-83 and is currently Professor of Quantitative Methods and Information Systems and Dean(Academic) at IIM, Bangalore.

Anup Sahay remembers...

Prof Bhandari was very soft spoken. And there used to be pin-drop silence in his classes, as no one wanted to miss out on what he was saying. There was always a sense of participating in a great and deep discovery, so insightful were his comments on the case studies and the related discussions. He rarely bothered with discussing the basics, or going thru the theory; he was always probing the next level, thinking of the next ‘why’, and presenting different perspectives. I remember a case study in which we were discussing the results of a statistical analysis called multi dimensional scaling when applied to consumer preference data. The technique gives a perceptual map of consumer behaviour; the data is seen on certain axes. The results seemed straightforward and without any new insights or twists, and who were we to question a sophisticated statistical tool……… After some discussion, Prof Bhandari said what if we turn the axes by 90deg (or maybe 180deg I am not very sure), and when he did that there were new insights on the problem. It was like eureka! I remember this incident probably because I am not sure that mathematical rules allow such ‘manipulation’, but Prof Bhandari could step outside the world-space of received knowledge and discover a lever that worked, that took our understanding to another dimension.

And sometimes, he would do this with humour as well. I remember a case discussion on shaving blades. At one point the discussion was probably around how to influence demand, and one student mentioned that people with lower incomes cannot buy blades. Prof Bhandari quipped, “So all men below the poverty line have long beards!”

He was predominantly a serious person, but could slip-in a humourous remark with equal seriousness that often caught us unaware. There was a discussion around an advertisement in which a bare-backed woman was sitting at a table. Prof Bhandari asked a question, everyone thought there must be a profound answer, but we were not willing to risk an answer, and stared at the ad looking for some clues. After a while, Prof Bhandari said, “However hard you look, she is not going to turn around!”

His classrooms were always full. He was one of the few professors whose classes were never missed. His reputation extended to other IIMs. The annual inter-IIM festival was held at Ahmedabad during my time there. Prof Bhandari’s classes were the only ones that were attended by students visiting from other IIMs. The word was out beforehand, and those of us who knew, went early to class, as seats were limited. And I remember that many students sat on the stairs and even attended standing for want of a seat. There are a very few teachers, in school or college, of whom students will say that they are ‘god’. – Labdhi Bhandari is one of them.

*Anup Sahay was a student of LRB

S. Ramantahan remembers...

Instances quoted by many of Labdhi's students would made one feel that he was known for his one-line witticisms. That, in my opinion, was not the characteristic of Labdhi that made him unique. He used his sarcastic comments occasionally to restrain the thought process of the students going astray. Otherwise, by and large his interactions were "therefore" (meaning "you are in the right direction, go ahead; can you stretch your brain a little more?") or "I see" (meaning "you are lost somewhere; do you see") and he consistently maintained an unfriendly wooden face with these monosyllables uttered in a mechanical manner, while his hand was busy scribbling something with a chalk on the table. These were religiously wiped off the table at the end of the class. Some students used to claim that on a rare occasion when he left it unerased, they deciphered it to be the BS term.

That was Labdhi with a strong aversion for mediocrity. Like Ashtavakra, who was said to have squirmed in the womb with every wrong Vedic chant, every illogical statement brought forth pain in his face. His acutely economic expressions were sufficient to punch holes in the collective verbiage churned out by the class and Labdhi intervened at the right time to sum up the case, leaving Dr. Watsons wondering why they could not think in those lines. The next class we were better equipped or so we thought and Labdhi took the logical combat to a higher level and the story repeated. Does it look like that he derived sadistic pleasure in proving his unequal opponents inadequate? Some of us thought so. What we did not realize was that in each of these sessions , our minds were being chiseled into better and better logical moulds without our realizing it. That was the biggest reward of having been a Labdhi student. Was this the best pedagogic method? I doubt. I have always felt that with a little more user-friendliness, Labdhi would have encouraged much higher level of participation. But it worked with Labdhi.

I distinctly remember two instances of Labdhi outside class room: one was in a conference on Advertising: Labdhi asked pointedly whether we see dominance of one community in the advertising industry, which affected the type of images projected in Indian advertisements. The reference was perhaps to the Goan Christian community and the ads in the early seventies were totally alien to pan Indian culture. Labdhi handled the sensitive issue with the same level of clarity as his case analysis without any rancour, but with absolute candour.

The second incident was when Labdhi was in the receiving end: In the final farewell, one of our batch mates severely criticized professors who do not have time for students. The reference was obviously to Labdhi, who was preoccupied with many consulting engagements at that time and so requested students to take appointment with him before meeting him. This was an instance when it looked like the unassailable has been questioned. Towards the end Labdhi took up the podium. He did not directly respond to the issue raised, but started saying that as the proceedings were on, he started shedding tears – I am not sure for what. He subsequently talked about declining student values over the period, which must have upset him. But having had an image of unemotional robot-like Labdhi, many of us were not willing to buy that he could shed tears. Viji has done a great service by bringing out the hitherto unknown human face of Labdhi.

On the whole, do we affectionately remember Labdhi? I doubt we had such emotional involvement. Some of us, who have been victims of his ruthless massacre hated to love him. Whatever may be our emotional reactions to him, if anybody says that he had interactions with Labdhi, but was not intellectually influenced by him, then he should be the dumbest person on earth (such beings are asphyxiated in the unpolluted atmosphere of IIMs) or the most intelligent man ever produced.

S. Ramanathan was a student of LRB in 1980-82

Ravi Miglani remembers...

I was a student of Prof. Bhandari from 1981 to 1983. I have since then been in a career relating to marketing and marketing research all these 25 years! Prof. Bhandari's passion for marketing was infectious - and I am still infected!

I share the views of all the others who have posted comments on your blog. Every time I am faced with a marketing/branding issue, I am bound to find some pearl of wisdom in the words of Prof. Bhandari that precisely addresses that issue. His cryptic yet profound quips are etched into my brain for life! One particular concept that keeps coming back to me is "don't just look for a gap in the market - look for a market in the gap!" When we used to look at brand mapping and those fancy maps showing how the various brands in the market were positioned - and where the white spaces were - we used to get very excited by a white space and claim there is a gap in the market: an opportunity to position a new brand in the gap. He cautioned us that when an obvious gap in the market looks to good to be true, it probably is. Not necessarily all gaps in the market are opportunities - there needs to be a market in that gap.

I will never forget that - helps me greatly when I am about to jump to conclusions in my market research presentations to my clients; I can still feel Prof. Bhandari whispering words of caution in my ears!

* Ravi Miglani was a student of LRB in 1981-83 and is currently CEO of Feedback Market Research, Egypt.

K. Raghuram remembers...

I do have a poignant memory to share. I chatted briefly with Prof. Bhandari in the Mumbai airport security area that fateful morning 20 years ago, just before the boarding announcements. He was catching the Ahmedabad flight at the same time that I was boarding the Pune one. My old “dry-mouth disease” from his classes promptly returned and we wouldn’t have progressed much beyond the “Hellos” were it not for my colleague, who being unaware of his reputation, waxed eloquent on some marketing topic. All I remember is that grin lighting up Prof. Bhandari’s face as he asked a couple of pointed questions. My colleague was saved by the boarding calls.

Two hours later, I sat stunned in the customer’s office in Pune listening to the news reports. The rest of the day was a blur. I remember getting to the hotel early in the evening to see the TV reports and praying that he had somehow survived, but it was not to be.

The one song that kept playing in my head the next few days was Billy Joel’s 1970s hit “Only the good die young”.

As painful as it may be for his children to know that there was so much to learn from their dad that they missed, they should know that he touched many lives, and that his spirit lives on in his work and the great memories he left behind. He was a Sanskrit scholar and am sure took the following verse from the Gita to heart:

Karmanya evadhikaraste ma phalesu kadacana

Ma karmaphalahetur bhur te sangostva akarmani

(You are entitled only to action, not to the fruits thereof

Think not of yourself as the creator of the fruit, nor attach yourself to inaction)

*Mr. K. Raghuram was a student of LRB at IIMA in 1980-82

Sanjay Agarwala remembers...

I was one of the lucky few who had the opportunity of being taught by Prof Bhandari in the 1982-84 batch of the PGP.

In addition to the regular course, I applied to do a Project course with him. Of the many applicants, again I was one of the 7 chosen to work under his guidance.

Right at the beginning of the session for the 7 of us, he asked what most students are most keen about…what grade do you want. All of us sheepishly said that we want an A. He smiled and said, "Ok, you all get an A. Unless you do things that force me to change this grade, you all can forget about the grade for this course. Now, can we focus on doing some real work?"

Under his guidance, Rajesh Mehta and I created a business plan for Garment Exports. It was very interesting to note that shortly thereafter, the Garment Export business boomed. His guidance was simple, pithy, and made us get out of the usual student psyche and look at the real world. Throughout the course he said that he is available to us for as long as we want, provided we had something sensible to discuss. This last bit, of demanding a 'sensible' discussion made us go over our thoughts over and over again before we asked for his time. And I must confess, that every time we met him, we came away exhilarated with the new direction he could give to our work.

I will forever be grateful for his guidance, and cherish the time we could spend with Prof Bhandari.

* Sanjay Agarwala was a student of LRB in 1982-84 and is currently the CEO of Eastern Software Systems Pvt. Ltd.

Rajeev Gupta remembers...

Many of us carry in our heads to this day concepts learnt from 'LRB'. Among my several unforgettable lessons, one of them came to my use as late as three months back.

The case in the class was about a 2 wheeler company (which had Bajaj Auto written all over it) in our socialist years. The question posed was how the company should view the market for its products, and where the industry / own brand demands were headed and importantly whether the company should commit to a large capex expansion plan since recent years' sales of its products had shown extremely high growth rates. And there was the usual page fill about market research on product features liked / desired by the customers, data on previous ten years' sales by model, colour and the like, national income data for past years etc. And not to forget a 'honey trap' think aloud by the CEO about high operating leverage at the current scale.

I remember the case discussion was kicked off by one of our sincere classmates ('SC') who had run time series on demand data over varying past periods (which confirmed that growth rates were indeed accelerating), and had run a correlation with national income which (surprise, surprise) confirmed a correlation, and with the confidence of this analysis he went on to present his demand projection for next nine years (a momentum forecast which took off from the recent high sales growth). He would probably have continued his magnum opus by stating that the company should indeed be thinking of expanding but at this point he happened to notice a smile beginning to form on LRB's face and that rare occurrence froze him…

LRB (now with a full smile): Can you tell me the demand for this company's products in 2000?

SC (shuffling his notes): Sir I…. did not project that far since the expansion will probably pay off in nine to ten years.

LRB: Right. And what do you think you have projected? Sales or Demand?

SC (beginning to get nervous): Sir, sales results from demand and so my projections are demand.

LRB (full smile continuing): and why cant sales result from…… supply?

SC: uh..uh.. uh… supply equals demand. But…….(sigh sigh)

Three slow nods of the head came from the SC. The lesson was clear… in a product shortage scenario, do sales reflect supply or demand?

We recently looked at a voluminous presentation from a large international investment bank on the Indian power generation sector which gave demand projections based on past data of energy sales. Reading it, I was reminded of the lesson from LRB. Clearly the bankers had not had the privilege of going to his class!!

LRB left indelible marks on all of us who had the privilege of being in classes given by him

* Rajeev Gupta was a student of LRB in 1980-82 and is currently the Managing Director of The Carlyle Group.

R. Raghavendra Ravi remembers...

I clearly and fondly remember a few incidents from the classroom. Prof Bhandari's class was one of the first classes for our batch at IIMA - I do not know whether it was the 'high standard' of IIMA or Prof Bhandari's sharpness which made his classes electric.

I remember my first brush with him - Case: Vora & Co.

Labdhi says - "So?"

One of my first classes at IIMA - I'm very eager to speak - I put up my hand.

Labdhi: "Yes"

I say: "The product does not have an identity."

Labdhi:"You mean it is not carrying an identity card?"

I'm stumped - did not know what to say - quickly withdrew. Many others were putting up their hands and were quickly making a fool of themselves. Slowly, after about 15 minutes it dawned on me that you have to be responsible for what you are saying and you have to defend it. LESSON 1 at IIMA.

One of the later classes - just a few days later - some students had gone and told Labdhi "we are not able to figure these cases out and how to study them" - Labdhi realised that some of us were panic stricken. He came to the class and spent 5 minutes telling us that we were not dumb. It requires some practice and the facility of looking at cases will improve.

LRB in an IIM-A classroom

What I remember him most for is a very sharp analytical mind (which I have seen in many people) but combined with a great ability to synthesize a solution or an approach by the time the class ended. The last 20 minutes of the class would be a Labdhi presentation on what he thought would be a possible solution (very carefully argued). I learnt that 'Analysis' is something very many people can do - but 'Synthesis' requires a wise and careful mind. LESSON 2 at IIMA.

His questioning was Socratic. It quickly led us to what he wanted us to learn. Some times the questions were sharp to the point of hurting - but the intent was clearly to focus the class on what had to be learnt.

I still remember my classmate Naseer Ahmed Usmani starting the class on Ahmedabad Textile Mills:

Naseer: "This company has too many products"

Labdhi: "How many??"

Naseer: "300"

Labdhi: "Why is 300 too many?? Is anything above 299 too many??"

A minute of silence - then Labdhi asks:

"What is a product in a textile mill? How many colours do you know? How many types of cloth - cottons, synthetics, blends? How many designs do you know of? So how many "products" are possible?"

We came up with thousands of possible "products". Suddenly 300 products started looking too few!!

I thought - what a grand approach. But I thought too soon.

Labdhi asks: "By the way - how big was this company?"

None of us reacted. We were all on the defensive. So Labdhi continues:

"Has anybody studied the Annual report in the case?"

Then we suddenly realize that just because its a Marketing Case does not mean we should neglect the "Annual Report"!! We quickly check the figures.

"Rs. 16.70 crores" somebody says.

Labdhi: "Which year was it?"

"1967" the answer

Labdhi finally sums up:

"1967....about 17 crore company....300 varieties of cloth.. is it too many?"

Now we get the idea - look at the totality and do not jump from one piece of data.

On that fateful day when his plane crashed, I was watching a cricket match and TV channels broke the news - I lost Prof Labdi Bhandari and another friend of mine V Mukundan (who used to work for Alfa Laval) who was on the same flight. To this day, I quote Prof Labdi Bhandari on various occasions.

* R. Raghavendra Ravi was a student of LRB between 1980-1982.

Rajiv Gulati remembers...

Marketing was my passion, and I was fortunate to have Prof. Labdhi Bhandari as the professor for not one, not two, but three of the credits that I took. He is about the only prof. about whom there has been such unanimity of opinion. All of us probably had same words for him, like 'Brilliant'. I remember, when I was in final year, one of the Juniors asked me 'How are Prof labdhi's sessions?' My answer, which he quoted for several days, was 'Orgasmic'.

He was brief in his comments, and extremely sarcastic. The net reult was the most effective communication of marketing concepts I have ever seen in my life.

Once he was teaching us about short-term increases in sales of washing powder by adding deals such as a free 'bucket' .. and one of our brilliant batch-mates was bright enough to suggest that 'Surf' (the brand under threat) should give something bigger..

"Like? A 'bathroom' for instance?" was Prof. Bhandari's response ... how can one forget that Surf lost 'market share' but not sales ... since market was artificially high for a short period due to the 'deals' of the competitor.

And another time we had gone to him for a project and I was especially pleased about my research since I had actually read a lot and had referenced relevant papers. As we started talking and I mentioned one publication which I had found with great difficulty and was so relevant....in two sentences he summarised the whole paper which he totally remembered ...

Genius I tell you ...

When his plane crashed, one of my Juniors in the company - an MBA from FMS, Delhi University - was the one to tell me about it. It is unusual for an MBA of one university to know about the professors from another. However, his comment to me was that he has lots of friends from IIM-A and he was shocked at the depth of sadness among each and every one of them.

As I started my career in marketing, I would always think .. what would he have said ...for every difficult situation that I encountered.

I love teaching ... its a hobby. Fortunately wherever I worked (Ranbaxy/Lilly), I was allowed to teach. I have delivered guest lectures at IIM, IIFT, GSB-Chicago, Richard Ivey Business School, Canada, Kelley School of Business at IU and also Wharton.

However, the first time I really started teaching was at IMT, Ghaziabad ... the marketing professor asked me to teach a whole semester to final year MBA students. The first thing I realized was that they did not even have 'Brand Management' as a subject.

I created the curriculum, taught two semesters (many of my students are CEOs today) and than handed over the developed course to my successor.

Guess who taught me Brand Management at IIM-A - Prof Labdhi Bhandari.

Guess whose teachings I shared with my students - Prof Labdhi Bhandari

Guess who was I trying to emulate while teaching - Prof Labdhi Bhandari

Just an example to say that his influence, his legacy, his memory goes way beyond than the people he directly touched.

And then ... several years after he passed away ... I think it was in 1997 ,,. I was working in the US Us at that time too, and at a friend's house I met the professor's younger brother .. and as I learnt that he was Prof Bhandari's brother, it was impossible for me to stop talking about him. As I started, he turned to his wife and said,"I always told you how much his students respected him. Here's a living proof."

*Rajiv Gulati was a student of LRB in 1980-82 and is currently Director of Global counterfeiting operations at Eli Lilly and Co.

Samar Das remembers...

I have very fond memories of Professor Bhandari and he was a guiding light and mentor to me. Here are some of my personal recollections:

As soon as I joined IIMA in the 1981 PGP program, I met him to ask him if he would be my faculty guide for a Course of Independent Study (CIS) on “Introduction of New Brands” in India. I also requested his permission to register for a Ph.D. level course he was teaching at the Institute. He asked me to get in touch with him later during my first year. I registered my CIS with him in the second year and also enrolled in his Ph.D. seminar on Behavioral Sciences Applications to Marketing.

Although he was very busy and one had to seek appointment with him well in advance, he always made time for me. It was fascinating for me to sit in his secretary’s office while his secretary would juggle appointments with several senior VPs of Marketing from well known Indian companies and multinationals while trying to find a time slot for me.

Once when he did not see me in his Product Management class, he found out that I was not well. He was concerned and visited me in the dorm. He also arranged for a consultation with Dr. Asopa’s wife, who was a doctor.

At the end of my second year, I had a little bit of a crisis. I was suppose to finish the thesis for my CIS project and submit it in time for him to forward the grades to the PGP office. I requested an extension since the project was huge and a lot of work was still left. He allowed me more time despite the fact that the entire batch's final results were held up due to my grades not having been submitted.

After graduating from IIM, I was in constant touch with him. I took up a job at Berger Paints and was transferred as Branch Manager of Gujarat based in Ahmedabad in 1985. Gujarat was suffering from severe drought and my sales were below target and I was getting constantly hounded by our VP Marketing from the corporate office. I met Professor Bhandari at his home and told him I was very unhappy with my existing job. He thought I was suited for much more senior marketing responsibilities and told me he would do something. Later that week, I got a call from the General Manager HR of a company in Ahmedabad who said Professor Bhandari recommended me for the position of Deputy General Manager Marketing and that they would like to interview me. Professor Bhandari was held in such high esteem that the General Manager insisted on meeting me at my home rather than me having to go over to their offices for discussions. I ended up not taking the offer since Berger gave me a corporate marketing assignment at their Head Office.

Professor Bhandari always thought I should go to the US for higher studies and do research in marketing. After working in India for 10 years, I did just that and got my Ph.D. in marketing at the University of Arizona,. My Ph.D. dissertation is dedicated to him and I am enclosing an extract from my Ph.D. dissertation.

"This research was two decades in the making! No, I did not spend 20 years in the Ph.D. program. My passion for brands and product management was instilled in a course I took with Late Professor Labdhi Bhandari at the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, India during my MBA years. It was a sad day for me at Calcutta, India, when I heard on the national TV news that Professor Bhandari died in a plane crash, traveling from Bombay to Ahmedabad, at the young age of 42 years. If it wasn't for Professor Bhandari's inspiration and guidance - I wouldn't be here today, at the United States, pursuing a Ph.D. rather than working for a corporation in India. I dedicate this dissertation to the memory of a great professor, who touched my life and changed it forever."

Extract from 'A Consumer Based Theory of Strong Brands And Its Implications For Brand Equity and Brand Management', PhD Dissertation of Samar Das submitted to the University of Arizona, 1998.

After graduating from University of Arizona, I taught at a State University in the U.S. as a marketing faculty for 5 years. I left the University to start an advanced marketing research company in the U.S. specializing in brand research, customer value measurement, and marketing analytics. Our client portfolio today includes some of the best known consumer brands and Fortune 500 companies. At times I wonder if all this would have been possible without the inspiration and nurturing which I got from Professor Bhandari in my early years as a marketing student and as a young marketing professional in India.

* Dr. Samar Das was a student of LRB at IIMA and is currently the CEO of C3Research LLC

Rohit Varma remembers...

Prof. Labdhi’s reputation preceded him. Marketing was the star department at IIM Ahmedabad and Labdhi arguably it’s brightest shining star, one of the then three pillars of the Indian marketing pioneer and think tank that was IIM Ahmedabad Marketing Department. These people did not just teach, or just consult. Which they did well. They pioneered new areas i.e. advanced the marketing discipline, especially for the Indian context. And in doing so served as the frame of reference in the 70s and 80s for countless organizations and their marketing departments.

Having spent a couple of decades in marketing jobs ever since I graduated from IIMA in 1983, I can safely say that the above reputation was well-deserved. Marketing grads from IIMA are on an average better trained and perform better than all other MBAs / IIM grads.

To a rookie, impressionable student such as myself, what impressed first was the demeanour. The Prof was a tall figure, as far as I remember, 6’ plus. He favoured white shirts which were well starched. He was invariably on time; one could also sense that every instant of his day was precious. Once in class, he angled his lean frame against the desk and threw out a couple of profound questions regarding the case at hand which the class then debated. Product Policy & Management was the course Prof. Labdhi was best known for and it was where a generation of IIMites learnt “product management.” All in all, an awesome figure.

That the Professor had an impressive resume added to his star mystique. His doctorate at Columbia was on family planning. The latter was an eye opener for impressionable minds. It wily nily provided proof to a student, if any were needed, that marketing was an omniscient discipline, it moved not just products, but entire societies!

I recall two interactions with him. One was during CP (class participation) when he was impressing about the need for logical thinking in attacking a case or a real life problem. I interrupted him saying “What about intuition?” Don’t remember his response, except that it stumped him just a bit. Ah, here is a chink in the professor’s mental armour, thought yours truly, gleefully.

The time I got to really know him was when I did a project with him. My summer placement project, done between the 1st and 2nd years, had - for certain personal reasons - fallen short of the minimum number of days norm .Therefore, the Institute asked me to do a six weeks make-up project with any of the professors available. I chose - among several options - to work with him. He asked me to go a product portfolio analysis for Cadila Laboratories (undoubtedly one of his many corporate clients). This resulted in a couple of evening visits to his residence to discuss the project. Here, one was suitably impressed by the number of tomes sprawled across the living room and on the dining table. It was an interesting project and I got great exposure. The Marketing Manager at Cadila treated me with just a little bit of deference! In hindsight, I realize this must have been because of the guru’s reputation.

Analytical thinking viz. the application of analysis to solve real life problems - as opposed to maths or engineering theoretical problems which is what one had spent most of one’s school and B.Tech days doing - was what I learnt best from him.

So also, though probably at a more subtle level, I imbibed (a) the value of time and (b) the belief and understanding of the widespread applicability of the marketing discipline. Not just products, but also services. Not just commercial organizations, but social ones. And so on.

A role model for all marketers, if he were here today the profession would be undoubtedly richer. Perhaps marketers from IIMA should think of an enduring initiative that bears his name. I would be happy to take this up and promote the same among fellow IIMites at our forthcoming Silver Jubilee Reunion.

*Rohit Varma was a student of LRB @ IIMA.

David Chambers remembers...

My own connection with Labdhi came through the Commonwealth Secretariat: like him, I was approached by the team there as a potential contributor to a series of conferences they put on, in different Commonwealth countries, for managers running state-owned enterprises. Labdhi and I wrote some of the introductory material for the conferences, and drafts for the follow-up reports. In total I guess we met a couple of times in London, and attended half-a-dozen short conferences together. Your father was an admirable man: open-minded, highly intelligent and articulate, energetic, kind, good-humoured: a person on whom one could always rely. As I recall, the series came to an end a year or so after his tragic death: I think that many of us felt that the idea had lost its spark in the absence of Labdhi.

The person running the relevant section of the Secretariat in London at that time was Dr. Mohan Kaul, who had - I think - been a former colleague of Labdhi's at Ahmadabad. I suspect that Mohan will have retired by now. His recollections of your father would be much more extensive and detailed than mine, and I hope that you can make contact. As for me - I formally retired from London Business School ten years ago so I've rather lost touch with the scene in which I, your father and Mohan collaborated in those earlier years.

*David Chambers was formerly at the London Business School

Khokan Mukerji remembers...

I had the pleasure to meet Labdhi in the 80s. My first encounter with him was when I was with ITC and he was on one of his early visits in 1985 as an Advisor to the Tea Board. As I recall, the Tea Board was fortunate to harness the brilliance and experiential wealth of your late father along with the Late Prof. Subroto Sengupta, Prof. Sudhash Roy of IIM, Calcutta and Mr V Nagireddy. I was privy to a discussion he was having with his group following a tour to the Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Though I was a bystander in the informal discussion, I was amazed to witness the rapt attention with which his views were being heard, internalised by his own working group and the deep respect he commanded amongst other participants and listeners.

In our generation, he was one of those rare species that had straddled both academia and industry, leaving lasting impressions of his depth of knowledge and wisdom on both HLL and IIMA

If I was to select a true Marketing Guru he would be my unarguable first choice. Though marketing was an evolving discipline in the 80s,he brought to bear insights and hypotheses which went to enrich the discipline and emphasise his standing as a professional and an academic par excellence. He had that unique gift of factoring in a true business approach into the theory and practice of marketing. I experienced this first hand in June 1987, when he took two sessions on marketing at the All India Management Association's Senior Management Programme at Srinagar. Like others, I took full advantage of interfaces with him and never ceased to be amazed at the depth of his learning and the strength of his convictions.

In June, at Srinagar, I had the pleasure of meeting your mother, your brother and yourself when you were accompanying your late father during his AIMA Session at the Centaur on Dal Lake. I still remember the weekend when participants along with faculty and your family went to Gulmarg. On that trip, I remember him fondly picking cherries from a small orchard for his beloved family with the same care and concern he displayed in the classroom.

Later, towards the end of 1987, I made it a point to meet up with him at ITC's Moghul Sheraton where he was taking a special session for the Tobacco Division's Senior Marketing Faculty. Though I was then heading Agri-Businesses marketing I gatecrashed for two sessions. Here he was addressing an FMCG company's marketing elite, akin to the breed he had been part of at HLL. His presence, authoritative approach to the given subject and his ability to virtually captivate his listeners was, again, all too evident.

Knowing that he was to leave post lunch the next day, me and my colleague, Subroto Chattopadhyay, sought time from him to get some advice and inputs for the Agri Business marketing plan that we were initiating for a business which was new to us.

What was to be a quick session transpired to be an intense three-and-a-half hour interaction with both of us soaking in his counsel and viewpoints which were to prove invaluable for our first marketing plan.

We had to remind him about his lunch and before we bid a hasty goodbye I volunteered, with trepidation, to send him "a bill' . I still remember his startled expression - what bill ? It was a pleasure. For you, any time!

There wasn't a next time. Through the first three quarters of 1988 me and my team were busy round-the-clock launching our first brand of edible oils - Sundrop- which was to become an instant winner, so I didn't have time to reconnect except for two phonecalls in August and September when I excitedly shared the news that Sundrop had exceeded our wildest expectations.

I remember it was October 19, 1988. I had just finished taking the morning sessions of the first course we were holding for our marketing supervisors at a bungalow called 'Studio' in Hyderabad. We had just finished lunch and were watching the afternoon news. I was devastated to see the screen flash the news of the Bombay-Ahmedabad plane crash and then all the names of those who were on board that fateful flight was scrolled down. Suffice to say that I could not contain my grief and indeed continue with my day. I wrote to your mother and remember receiving a prompt reply.

I have had the good fortune of coming across many outstanding individuals but few, very few, could compare with Labdhi, as a teacher, a marketing pro and a fantastic human being. My association was confined to less than a decade, but he remains engraved in my memory as an exceptional person who had etched his name in indelible letters in the realm of academics and marketing.

*Khokan Mukerji was formerly at ITC