Jerry Rao remembers...

I did not know Labdhi Bhandari at IIMA. I got to know him many years after I graduated from there.

In the late eighties, I was in charge of Citibank’s Consumer Business in India. We were planning on entering the Credit Card Business. I was looking for a good consultant to help us understand whether there was a real business proposition and as to how best we could grapple with it. I remember my conversation with Shyam Sunder (who was one year my senior at IIMA). I casually asked Shyam whether he knew a good person who could consult for us. Shyam’s response was instant and categorical: “Labdhi Bhandari is your best bet. The problem is that he may be busy”.

We managed to persuade Labdhi that our project was an interesting one and he made time for us. He got going right away. We jointly worked out our data requirements. In the next few weeks, we started getting him the data and he began his analysis in earnest. The project was a success in virtually every way. In retrospect it is so clear that Labdhi asked the right questions and his analytical insights were spot on. We launched into Credit Cards with far less trepidation than we would have otherwise; but I would add that we also went into it with realism, for instance knowing full well that large profits were not soon on the horizon.

In engaging with Labdhi through the project, what stood out was his soft personality, his razor-sharp and incisive mind, his willingness to separate tentative conclusions from firm ones and go in search of data to strengthen the tentative results and above all his characteristic ability to combine solid theoretical insights with practical business applications. I have worked with many consultants including quite a few from the best-known consulting firms in the world. Working with Labdhi beat all those experiences hands-down. The Citibank Credit Card Business in India went on to become a first mover, a pioneer and a market leader. We owed so much of it to Labdhi. And to think that he did not live to see it and share in our successes!

His tragic demise in a plane crash at a young age still has a searing impact on me. He was so full of promise. So many achievements were definitely on the anvil in the future. To be cut off so young, with so many prospects still ahead of him was terribly unfair. It was also a great loss to Indian business and to Indian Management education. The Greeks had a saying about the gods loving disproportionately those who die young. To my mind, that was small consolation for the loss that all of us suffered.

* Jaithrith (Jerry) Rao is an alumnus of IIMA and knew LRB while at Citibank in the late 80s. He later started MphasiS and served as the Chairman of NASSCOM.

Prof. John Farley reflects...

I had the extraordinarily good fortune of serving as advisor for Labdhi’s Ph.D. thesis at the Graduate Business School at Columbia University. In addition to Labdhi’s high intelligence and charming personality which endeared him to his colleagues and teachers, he had insightful empirical research skills.

Labdhi’s research focused on understanding the impact of the rapidly growing Indian population. He won a large grant from the Population Division of the Ford Foundation. He was very effective in dealing with international experts in these fields. This supported roots for so-called “social marketing”, which deals with the use of aspects of marketing skills to deal with social matters, such as nutrition and demographics.

LRB after his graduation ceremony at Columbia University (date unknown)

Unlike many non-US students who claimed that they would return to home universities after completing a Ph.D. but did not do so, Labdhi became a professor at the highly regarded Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Over time, he became one of only a handful of recognized Indian academic marketing experts.

My role as Labdhi’s advisor led me to visits to India, which have continued over the decades. These visits led to multi-country research programs for me.

Labdhi helped arrange visits to several areas across India. He turned out to be an excellent and tireless tour guide. We went to the Taj Mahal and spent Independence Day in Delhi along with the President of Poland. We made a Northern circle which included Jaipur. A later Southern trip included Madurai and Madras.

Labdhi was, no doubt, in the vanguard of growing cadres of Indian Ph.D. students as well as Indian colleagues and collaborators in leading US business schools.

*Dr. John U. Farley was LRB's PhD supervisor at Columbia University and is now the C.V. Starr Distinguished Research Fellow of International Business at The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth

R. Balachandra remembers...

I first came across Labdhi at IIM Ahmedabad around 1967 or so (I don’t exactly remember the year). He was a student in my first year Operations Management course. I was a very young professor – not much older than Labdhi. There were 120 students in the two sections. Even though Labdhi was one of the youngest (or probably the youngest) in that group, he stood out. He was very thoughtful, serious and put in plenty of hard work. My course was more quantitative, and he had always some difficulties with math type courses. But, he never gave up; instead he was able to master the topics to the extent that he was able to contribute well in the class discussions. But his real forte was to see through the clutter of the cases and focus on the real issues. His comments in the class were always to the point; I remember him as a student who contributed well to the discussion in class. During this time, I did not know him well. I knew him only as a very bright student.

Then came our journey to Columbia University Business School in September 1972. He had joined IIM as a faculty member. He and I were both admitted to the Ph.D. program. I got an apartment as a married student (my wife had stayed back for the first year) at Woodbridge Hall and Labdhi became my room-mate. I enjoyed his company for almost nine months till my wife and son joined me.

I got to know Labdhi a little better during this time. We shared tasks around the apartment; I would cook most of the time, and he would do the dishes etc. Both of us studied hard to get through the courses and the exams. I had a slightly easier time because of my background (engineering) but I had difficulties with some of the behavioral courses. Labdhi excelled in those while he had some difficulties with the quantitative courses. We helped each other out, though he complained much about the math-type courses we had to take. We used to kid him about his obsession with these

courses and try to get him into a good mood. But by sheer persistence and hard work, as before, he was able to master those courses and get good grades in those.

Focusing on the studies left us very little time to socialize. We had a group of Indian students in the Business School and in the Economics Department. We used to meet often for dinners at each other’s apartments. Labdhi was a very serious person most of the time, as he constantly worried and complained about his relative difficulties with some of the courses. However, he would not be so serious that he would avoid social get togethers. Vinay Pandit (he was in a university in Buffalo, NY) and Prakash Apte (Ex-Director of IIMB) were two good friends of Labdhi in our Ph.D. days at Columbia.

From the second year on (when he moved out of my apartment) he had a much easier time in the courses as he was focusing on his field – marketing. He was very good at that as well as in the behavioral courses. His experience with Hindustan Levers gave him a strong foothold in his marketing courses. My interaction with him lessened considerably after this as I had my family with me. My wife and I had him and a couple of other Indian students for dinner a few times during our stay in New York.

Labdhi was a very generous person. I remember the time when he took us all out for a nice Indian dinner in a fancy restaurant on Central Park. It cost him quite a bit, but he felt he had to celebrate his completing the course work.

He was a very good friend. Once during our stay together I was going through a very difficult time. Labdhi helped me get over that. He was there like a true friend when I needed him. He never judged me or my actions, but gave me his full support and understanding. I will always remember that.

I completed my Ph.D. earlier (in three years) and I moved away to Boston for my job. I stayed back in the USA, and did not return to IIMA. My contacts with Labdhi became less and less. There was no email in those days. I knew he went back to IIM and got married. When I visited Ahmedabad in the early 80s I did visit him in his house on the campus, when I met the family.

Being in the US, I learnt about the airline accident in the newspapers, and I also saw that Labdhi was one of the passengers. It broke my heart. I felt that a bright light had been snubbed. I heard that he was a great teacher and sought after by many companies for his advice. I can only speculate what heights he would have reached and what he would have accomplished.

It has been a long time, and I often wondered how his young wife coped with the tragedy. I had no contact. It appears that she has done a fine job raising the children.

*R. Balachandra taught LRB at IIMA in the late 1960s and was later a fellow PhD student at Columbia University. He is now a Professor at Northeastern University.

K. S. Srinivasa Murty remembers...

I had known Labdhi in late 60’s and early 70’s when we were colleagues at Hindustan Lever. I joined the firm in 1968 as a management trainee, a year after he joined. Around 1970, I was involved in a pioneering effort at HLL, to use continuous consumer panels for evaluating test markets for new products and studying brand loyalty. As a manager in the operations research department during that period, I developed the required analytics for consumer panel data analysis. Apart from developing the analytics, I had to sell this new approach the marketing team and help institutionalize it. It being the first time continuous consumer panels and the new analytics were being used in India there was considerable skepticism and it took quite a bit of effort on my part and some strong support from a few colleagues in the Marketing group, to sell this new approach as a relevant tool/aid to decisions relating to test markets, consumer promotions, brand loyalty etc. Labdhi was one of the colleagues who strongly supported our effort and helped in the adoption of this new approach to analysis.

About a year or so later Labdhi moved from Product manager’s role to lead the market research team. While he was the deputy to an Expatriate Market Research Specialist, who headed the department, Labdhi de facto managed the team and client relations. He effectively leveraged his sharp intellect and experience/credibility as a product manager to transform the market research team from a group of technique-focused researchers to providers of relevant consumer and customer insight. During that short stint in the Market research department, he played a significant role in improving its credibility and acceptability. I also had the opportunity to work very closely with Labdhi, in late 1971 / early ’72, when I handed over my pet project of this consumer panel data analysis to his market research team.

During my long stint in HUL, spanning over three decades, I noticed that some young managers stand out from the rest quite early in their career and are seen as destined for fast growth to the top. Ladhi, in my view, was definitely one such young manager. He demonstrated a sharp intellect, questioning and determined mind and empathy in dealing with people around him. Even though he was handling responsible roles and seemed destined to grow fast, he was clear that he would want a wider canvass, across multiple industries to work with. He acted on his belief and quit HUL to join IIM where he could combine his academic interests and the opportunity work on consulting assignments across multiple industries.

Soon after that I moved out of marketing/marketing services into the commercial function. We lost touch for a while, and touched based again in mid 80’s when I was the General Manager – Corporate Development in HLL. By then he had attained considerable fame both as one of the outstanding professors at IIM Ahmedabad as well as a strategy consultant associated with a wide range of industries.

The 'thin, lean, young executive with a strong mind'

LRB (far left) at a Hindustan Lever Ltd. gathering, probably in the early 1970s

I will always remember Labdhi as I knew him in early 70’s, the thin lean young executive (I think he was the youngest among his peer group) with a strong mind who made a great impact on every assignment he handled during those early years in HLL.

* K.S.Srinivasa Murty was a colleague of LRB at Hindustan Lever Ltd. in the late 1960s and early 70s. He retired as a VP AT HUL in 2002.

R. Gopalkrishnan remembers...

On 3rd July 1967, six wannabe managers walked into Hindustan Lever House at Backbay Reclamation at about 9 am simultaneously. All of them had been recruited under the company’s prestigious management trainee scheme. All of them had hopes in their hearts and stars in their eyes.

Of the six, two are no more: Charanjit Singh, who died in a car accident overseas, and Labdhi Bhandari, who died in a tragic plane accident on 19thOctober, 1988. Of the four who are around, Dilip Katdare, Bhagwan Advani and I are in contact. Nandurdikar is not in contact, at least with me.

This piece is a tribute to Labdhi by me, an erstwhile colleague from his trainee batch.

Fresh out of IIT Kharagpur and a hostel-experienced, starving young man, I was 50 kg (125 lbs) in weight with a near 6 foot frame. I had competition from Labdhi who had similar statistics, but was from IIMA! Compared to other trainees, I was very young, just over 21 years of age. Here too I had competition because Labdhi, if I recall right, was yet to hit 19!

I joined the computer department as an analyst, Labdhi joined the marketing department. In due course, he became the assistant brand manager for washing products. Whichever odd hour my company could get a booking at the IBM 1401 computer centre, I laboured to keep the punched card decks in order and the magnetic tapes spinning, testing whether my auto-coder codes were acceptable to the monster machine.

However Saturday was a day for catching-up and gossip. Trainees like us who were not yet in the throes of the fabled, busy life of a full-fledged manager, would have lunch together at SAMOVAR or the MLA hostel nearby.

It was clear to all of us that Labdhi was exceptionally bright. We never said so or admitted it because we were all convinced that we too were exceptionally bright. Many of us were operational by temperament, but Labdhi was cerebral. To all of us, it was self-evident that “a bunch of dodos was running Hindustan Lever”.

The top folks, it seemed to us, were not skilled at identifying the burning issues and then deal with them with the speed and efficiency we credited ourselves with. Such was the sweet innocence of freshly minted MBAs and engineers.

Three years later, around the end of 1970, Labdhi was the first from our batch to be promoted to “Grade 2.” Labdhi got a cabin to himself, as Head of Market Research in the Management Services Group, while we had to share a cabin with a colleague. Labdhi would get invited to certain meetings where we would be requested to “be available.”

All these ‘huge’ reasons were enough to cause tension and jealousy, but in a collegial and human way. It was the first milestone in our career; the results would determine to some extent who would stay on and who would leave in an intensely competitive system. It all sounds so silly in retrospect, but such setbacks, petty jealousies and foibles were instrumental in our personal development in those early days.

To Labdhi’s credit, I must add that not once did he ever wear his new found status on his sleeves. It was merely an event, just the luck of the draw. But something unexpected began to emerge in his murmurs soon after. Who wants to spend a lifetime selling soaps and toiletry products, he would ask. Surely we were destined to do better things? Like what? Like teaching and research!! It was a thunderbolt, completely out of the blue!

The thought certainly passed my mind that this guy could be afflicted with pretensions of being intellectually superior, or else why would he think of chucking up a terrific job in a premier company? And that too to teach? Or could it be that he had an inverse snobbery?

To our great surprise, he did quit to take up a teaching job back at his alma mater. It showed us that he was a person of serious thinking as well as action. He had figured out something that would make him happy and he was determined to pursue that single-mindedly. He was the first to tell me something like, “We must enjoy what we do and do what we enjoy.” That became my favourite phrase in later years and it would come back to me many times in the future.

Between 1973 and 1988, when he died, we met periodically. On one occasion, he requested me to deliver a lecture at IIM. On another occasion, he sat in on a Lever brainstorm on how Dalda could be revived. I got married and he came home for dinner. Years after that, he got married and I visited his home for dinner. Labdhi had a fiercely active mind, which was blast-furnace hot, always curious and always energizing.

In the ripeness of time in 1987, I was appointed to the board of Hindustan Lever. He was delighted and came home to say congratulations. The old petty jealousies of youth were absent. He was happy that his friend had become a director of the company that we had all grown to love. Now, I was proud that Labdhi, my friend, had become a celebrated authority on marketing and was widely respected. He was enjoying what he did, and I was enjoying what I did. We had a great evening together.

And then, suddenly on 19th October, 1988, an early morning Bombay-Ahmedabad plane crashed. With that, India lost a light, I lost a friend and many in the world mourned.

13th April, 2009

*R. Gopalkrishnan is Director, Tata Sons and was a colleague or LRB at Hindustan Lever.

Harsh Mariwala remembers…

I must have met Labdhi in the late 1970s or early 80s. At the time, I was part of the Bombay Oil Industries, which was a typical family-run firm selling largely unbranded products like hair oil. I wanted to start branding our products but we had no in-house knowledge/expertise of marketing or brand building. I myself had no formal management education and since we were a small company located in the midst of Bombay’s commodity markets, it was quite hard to attract talent.

That’s how Labdhi came into the picture. By that time he already had a reputation as the top-most marketing academic in the country (not as a practitioner). We were probably introduced through an acquaintance and I asked him to fill in the gap in my training about marketing and brand building and act as our in-house marketing expert.

We must have spent about a total of 15-20 days together during that time. From our interactions it was clear that he was very bright - extremely sharp. He was also very, very hard working. I remember he used to be very busy during that period and would not have time to meet when he was in Mumbai. So, often, I would meet him at the airport, catch the flight with him to Ahmedabad and we would work all night and then I’d catch the flight back to Mumbai in the morning! That was the sort of inner drive he had to excel or succeed.

He was guiding me at a personal level through many one-on-one sessions that we had during that time and pretty much gave me my first exposure to the entire field of marketing – how to position a product, market research, segmentation, brand building, etc. In some sense, he sowed the initial seeds for Marico’s later successes. We went from what was then a 50 lakhs company to a situation where our branded business for the year 2007-08 was Rs.1907 crores.

I remember one story. In those days, television had made a big splash and unlike today, there was only one channel – Doordarshan. Also, unlike today, where the channel produces programmes and then sells advertising time around it, in those days, the advertisers would be identified first and they would actually sponsor and produce the programmes on a theme around their product. Labdhi had given us a suggestion at the time which, to our regret, we didn’t take up. He had advised us to sponsor an epic serial from Indian mythology like Ramayana or Mahabharat. We didn’t take it up then and a few years later someone else picked it up and it was a huge, runaway success. We did use another of his ideas to advertise for our hair oils though – a programme concept on the traditional women of India, which we implemented as a TV series called ‘Tera Panne’ starring Hema Malini and directed by Vikas Desai.

Labdhi was on one hand very professional, demanding and ambitious and on the other hand very humble and easy to get along. He was not at all financially minded. He was driven by building something, by his interest in helping people and making an impact. And he certainly did make an impact.

* Harsh Mariwala knew LRB in the 1980s. He is the Chairman and Managing Director of Marico, a leading FMCG player in India.

Dr. V. Raghunathan remembers...

It is a privilege to be able to say that yes, I did know Prof. Labdhi Bhandari and knew him well.

Unfortunately, I can’t say I was a close friend, for the simple reason that when I first came to know him in early 1982 when I joined as a rookie Assistant professor in IIMA as a 26 year old, Labdhi (that’s how we all called him fondly) was already a celebrity Professor. Besides I was in finance while he was in Marketing. But yes, we were as close as a celebrity Professor and a rookie Assistant Professor coming from different disciplines could be professionally.

That he was fond of me was evident from the readiness with which he agreed to teach the entire marketing module when I was to coordinate my first MEP (Management Education Programme – a five month programme those days) in 1985. And, as the coordinator of the programme, I recall sitting through many of his classes and emerging with the experience that he was one who could teach ‘marketing like mathematics’! I have made that comment to many since then!

By that what I mean is, when Labdhi handled a case and proved why this distribution channel rather than that distribution channel was more appropriate for a certain product, it all sounded so logical as if it was Boolean algebra. And that’s not the feeling one gets when lesser experts treat the same subject. A hundred doubts come to mind as to why the distribution cannot be done differently and so on. Until I met Labdhi, to me marketing was largely a jargon-oriented mumbo-jumbo, where whatever you said could be defended! But not after those sessions I sat through! In short, his clarity, and approach was so elegant, simple and logical, that one felt one was truly studying something scientific – a tribute to the term management science.

I recall October 19, 1989 with profound sadness. I was returning from Chennai and when I landed at the A’bad Airport, the scene was completely chaotic as the crash had happened barely 60 minutes ago. Everybody was rushing out of the airport towards the accident site. I came across an old student who was the first one to tell me that Dr. Bhandari was on board, because he had seen the driver who had come to pick him up with his name placard. Those days were not the days of cell phones. I rushed to the campus, hoping against hope that Dr. Bhandari was not on that flight. But when I reached the campus, the unfortunate news turned out to be true, as the news had reached the campus by then.

I recall feeling a complete numbness; a complete sense of emptiness. That has, in some ways, been a vacuum difficult to fill. In some ways the vacuum still remains. He was the kind of person who would make anyone feel that he was his best friend! No wonder even I felt that way. He was a ‘management professor’ in its highest tradition.

In losing Labdhi, not only did all of us lose an outstanding colleague, but IIMA lost out on a potentially outstanding Director and the Indian Industry an outstanding marketing professional.

* Dr. V. Raghunathan was a colleague of LRB at IIMA and is now Chief Executive of the GMR Varalkshmi Foundation.

Shyam Sunder Suri remembers...

I first met Labdhi through Nitin Patel, who was a faculty at IIMA. Labdhi was looking for market research services for his consulting activities and I was running a market research company - Marketing and Business Associates (MBA) - along with three others from the IIMA 1972 batch. So we teamed up with Labdhi. In any consulting operation, Labdhi would do the problem identification and strategy determination, while we would do the market research based on the problem and to feed into the strategy. In some sense, he would be the brains of the operation while we would be the eyes and ears collecting, collating and analyzing the data.

Labdhi was very parsimonious in speech, but whatever he said was completely sense ridden. I always thought that he had a natural Marwari business sense combined with the sophistication of a Western educated person. And that was very unique to him. He would be able to get to the nub of any business problem within the first half hour of any meeting.

An example I remember of this is the case of Parachute Oil. They were considering a price reduction and Labdhi grasped very quickly that there was no need for a price reduction and, if anything, they should increase the price and he gave his reasoning for this. The market research we did later confirmed this to be the case.

With Labdhi, we also ran a set of product policy training programmes, typically in Goa. Labdhi would usually take most sessions while we would take a few on market research, and someone from the advertising agencies would take another couple. We would advertise these programmes and write to companies and they would send people from their Marketing departments for the training.

Another such training programme was being planned in November, 1988. So, when Labdhi was in Mumbai on 18th,October I asked to meet him to discuss some of the logistics of the programme. Labdhi had initially planned to take the evening flight back to Ahmedabad but wasn't sure. The flight in those days would be fairly early in the evening and he wasn't sure if his meeting would finish by then. As far as I remember, he was meeting someone at Cadbury that day. We spoke 2-3 times during the day and Labdhi finally called me in the afternoon and said that he was staying over that night as the meeting had not finished on time. And he said we could meet at the Centaur for dinner.

We met in his room and then went for dinner. Labdhi's favourite food was Chinese - especially his all-time favourite golden fried prawns. He had those, fried rice, some noodles and brandy with hot water - which he preferred because of his chronic throat /sinus/ cold problems.

We discussed the logistics of the upcoming product policy training programme - how many people were expected, etc. He was also discussing whether the whole family would accompany him or just his wife.

Then later he mentioned that he had been spoken to at IIMA regarding whether he would be interested in taking up the Director's position and he was ruminating over whether he should. I told him that he should give it a go and IIMA needed leaders like him. That evening, Labdhi described to me what he would be interested in doing if he took it up - he said he would want to take IIMA more international and get foreign faculty, etc.

We were together till around midnight. Next morning, I got a call from Rama Bijapurkar saying that the flight to Ahmedabad has crashed.

*Shyam Sunder was a colleague and friend of LRB and is currently Director at Magus Customer Dialog.

N. Ramanathan remembers...

Passing out of IIM Ahmedabad in 1969 and fresh into the first job at Bombay, I heard of our ‘senior’ Labdhi Bhandari. He was already a marketing man of some substance in Hindustan Lever. Some of us were looking to making some contributions outside our own companies. A few IIMA faculty members were helping us put some practical ideas together, and one of it was helping hospitals with inventory management. Labdhi’s name kept coming up in these discussions, and before long, we were in a meeting with him to discuss our projects.

He was soon off for his PhD in Columbia University.

My next meeting with him was in 1983, at IIMA, where he was teaching marketing, and his reputation had by then become quite formidable. Labdhi was involved considerably with industry. One such involvement was as a director in Enfield India, which was planning to launch a slew of Zundapp two wheelers, and needed a marketing head. It was a two-hour long interview, which led to many an interaction with him for the next three years, as Labdhi devoted a great deal of time advising Enfield on its marketing strategy.

Meetings with Labdhi were never short. The sessions would go late into the evenings. He had the habit of paying total attention to what was in hand and giving it what it took. Over long sessions, the positioning of the vehicles got clearer. The legendary Bullet was of course locked into the space of a man’s bike. Silver Plus the 50 cc moped was the middle class commute. Explorer, the 50 cc bike, was trickier – it was romanticized as the 18 year-old’s safe first bike. Backed by his thoughts, a 35 cc Mofa, a cycle-substitute with an integral design, was developed.

Looking back, it must seem strange that Labdhi associated himself with Enfield. It was an underdog at a time when Suzuki, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Honda simultaneously arrived in India, which was quite unused to ‘foreign’ products at that time. But he had great faith in pulling it off – he saw that the Enfield products could be positioned in spaces left vacant by others.

In 1985, he asked me to present these product launches in his Product Management course. The professionalism he brought to marketing strategy, advertising and intensive market research seemed to transform the management of Enfield in every other domain as well. This was the view of one of the participants!

For a variety of reasons, the products did not quite succeed in the market. I moved on. Labdhi kept his faith until he was snatched away prematurely from us.

*N. Ramanathan worked with LRB while at Enfield.

Sunil Gulati remembers...

Unlike most of the bloggers here, Marketing was not my forte and I tried to minimize the number of Marketing courses I did. Probably the only reason I regret this is that I would have got to know Labdhi a lot better than I did as the memory of him as a Prof is one of the better etched memories that have survived the quarter century since. What really struck me about Labdhi was that he had an uncanny ability to cut through the 'crap' and have an insight into the 1 or 2 issues that really mattered in any case or other discussion. In the marketing arena in particular this was unique given the inherent fuzziness of most topics. This was completely refreshing and pushed the entire class into their 'stretch' or sometimes 'panic' zones as the class knew that they had to develop similar insights to be appreciated by Labdhi and that mere CP would get them into trouble!

A specific case that I remember is about a ball bearing manufacturer. The problem was to devise segmentation strategies for the company. There was an infinite amount of discussion in the class along segmenting the market by all the obvious variables - size, end use industry, type of distribution channel etc. I guess all these are relevant variables but Labdhi really kept pushing the class by saying "does it really matter" or the more laconic "so?". Towards the end, he asked the class as to why we were doing segmentation and what was the end goal. Again he provided the simple answer - to ensure that sales could go up by the minimum amount of effort. In keeping with this line of thinking he provided an insight into segmentation in this case by asking the question as to what is the variable that really determines who are users of ball bearings? Though the class has a lot of engineers, nobody had thought about the fact that ball bearings need to be replaced in a bearing at fixed intervals every time they are serviced, and hence the most useful way of segmenting the market would be by time elapsed since the manufacture date/ last service date. This was like "Eureka"....simple, yet so powerful a concept and entirely practical and executable....which, as I have learnt over the years, has to be the touch point of any strategic thought process.

I think this incident illustrates the man that Prof. Bhandari was - simple, brilliant but without pretensions but at the same time confident in his own brilliance, and wanting to see the best come out in others!

*Sunil Gulati was a student of LRB and is currently Group President and Head - Risk Management and Corporate Development at YES Bank.

Vijaylakshmi Rao remembers...

I hardly knew Labdhi as a person while at the Institute. To all of us whose interests in Marketing and Product Management were kindled by his lectures and case studies, he was a learned, bright, not-so-friendly and at times sarcastic, but much-worshipped Guru; not someone you could crack jokes and discuss South Indian cooking with. But that's just what I did many years after leaving the Institute.

It was in March 1988 while I was working as Executive Asst to V.Krishnamurthy, Chairman, SAIL, that I got the opportunity to interact closely with Labdhi. Along with Prof Mohan Kaul, he was the Roundtable Coordinator for a conference on Public Enterprise Management: Strategies for Success, jointly organised by The Management Development Programme of the Commonwealth Secretariat, London and IIMA and held on March 6-11, 1988 at New Delhi. When he came to Delhi, Labdhi 'claimed' to know very little about the public sector and wanted help with 'preparation'. As EA to V.Krishnamurthy, who was then also the Chairman of IIMA Board, I was assigned the task of providing Labdhi all the background material, facilitating his meetings with senior managers in the public sector, etc. It was absolutely amazing to see him absorb what everyone spoke - he hardly took any notes, asked what seemed to me a few 'crazy' questions and just listened. In the few hours that I spent with him discussing and debating what everyone had said, I learnt hands-on how to aggregate information from different sources of varying credibility and relevance, synthesize it, build logic into inferences, think laterally for solutions and finally present it in an extremely structured and convincing manner.

Needless to mention, he spoke exceptionally well at the Conference. I attended the Conference mainly because I had been entrusted the task of taking notes for future reference (V. Krishnamurthy later headed a Committee that brought out the first White Paper on the Public Sector). What I found most amusing (and flattering as well!) was that Labdhi often chose to sit next to me in the back bench, whispering comments about speakers he did not agree with or found boring! He also complimented me openly for having helped him out and gave me credit for some of his analysis which I sincerely believe I did not deserve. He insisted that I come along for the valedictory dinner saying he would otherwise get bored talking only to the 'serious types'!! He was no more a Professor to me - he had become a good friend like so many of my batchmates at IIMA! I told him that my friends would probably be very surprised to know that he was just like one of us. To which he said "Don't tell them, that will spoil my image."

Believe me, I have not mentioned about this to anyone. I did not bring it up even at our 25 year reunion, though I was tempted to do so. But now, I would like to reach out to Apoorva and Anupam just to convey to them that their father was not just a Marketing Legend but a warm, friendly, modest, fun loving person with a great sense of humour. I still preserve one of the several chits he passed on to me during the conference besides cherishing very happy memories of my brief interaction with him.

* Vijayalakshmi Rao was a student of LRB in 1980-82 and worked with him briefly in 1988. She is currently the COO and Director of Scope e-Knowledge Centre at Chennai.

Madhukar Sabnavis remembers...

I was a student of Prof. Bhandari at IIM in 1984-85. I never got to know him personally (and i was just one more person in a large crowd for him) but have very fond memories of him as a teacher.

When I joined IIM in 1983, he was an icon - we heard so many good things about him from our seniors and he had been voted among the top 5 Professors of the previous year by our seniors. At that cynical age, one waited eagerly to see such a man in action and declare opinions passed down about him as hyperboles. But Prof. Bhandari surprised us. From the first class he more than lived up to his reputation- he was mersmeric!

Its amazing to see classrooms filled post lunch at 2 pm (thats when he took most of his sessions) even when he didnt insist on attendance. We attended only to listen to him and his case analysis. His case studies were often only two three pages (very different from many of the other cases which we got that were reams and reams of data) but the analysis he juiced out of them was loads and insightful.

I remember him as a soft spoken, kind professor; never rejecting any class participation as superficial or stupid; always encouraging students to voice their opinion; and one thing I learnt from him was that its not wrong to be silent - to pause and think before giving a response. I noticed this - he practised this in class - he didnt shy away from remaining silent for a few minutes before giving a response - and I found that interesting especially in our society where we think intelligence means immediate, spontaneous responses.

It was a sad day when I heard about his death in an air crash, I think in 1988...I had joined Ogilvy and Cadbury was a client of ours (though I wasnt working on it). It seemed so close home as on that last visit he had met people at Cadbury I think and yes, it was a professor who taught me and who all, including me, admired.

By the way, even my batch voted him among the top 5 professors of the year our year! A tribute to his brilliance and his consistency.

*Madhukar Sabnavis was a student of LRB in 1983-85 and is currently Country Head, Discovery and Planning at Ogilvy and Mather, India.

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.