Prof. Parama Barai

Undergraduate and Postgraduate level

Prof. Parama Barai completed Civil Engineering from NIT Durgapur, Masters from IISc. Bangalore, and PhD from XLRI Jamshedpur. After Masters, she started her work in the engineering department of Tata Steels. However, with time her work shifted from the technical department to managing the responsibilities in the company.

Joining IIT KGP

While she was working with Tata Steel, she enjoyed the exposure she got initially. However, the monotonicity of the work made her realize her interests in research. Inspired by her husband and her ever-increasing eagerness to explore new areas in the field of management studies, dragged her to IIT KGP.

Students pursuing Management after graduation

It is good that students pursue management after graduation, it’s their own choice. But, one thing she said was that going directly for management just after graduation is not that efficient, as having about 1-2 years of work experience as an engineer is also very important so that one would be able to know the problems that one faces while developing and implementing things.

Research Work

Her main area of research is Finance. Her area of focus is the sentiment and behavioral analysis of the top management position holders (usually termed as insiders), mainly the directors, or CFOs of a company, for example, Mukesh Ambani in the case of Reliance Industries Ltd. They know about their companies to the best and even they buy and sell its shares. She is researching as to why do they do so, what happens when they do so and what role does sentiments play in business.

Indian and Foreign Institute

According to her, foreign institutes are far more advanced and research-oriented with respect to those in India. Although we are also growing at a steady rate, they are genuinely more facilitated today in terms of the initialization of case studies, venture capital complexes, etc. However, there are many Indian Institutes which we should not forget to mention like IIM Ahmedabad that also have started working on new ideas to compete with foreign institutions. All in all, somewhere, somehow, we haven’t yet proved ourselves as path makers. So there is a long way to go. Slowly, we have also started realizing this and started working on the entrepreneurs in us.

Management- Knowledge or creativity

In her point of view, to pace with the competing developing world, one has to be creative but can take steps easily if one is properly accustomed to the concerned area and has studied the subject deeply. So along with creativity, knowledge and experience are must and it is applicable for each and every subject.

Message for the students

Her message for the students is to stop using Whatsapp and other social networking sites. Her concern is depleting manual interactions. So her prime advice to students is to keep a safe distance from such social platforms and that one should try to interact among themselves by working and spending time together, so that something fruitful comes up and develops healthy relations to cherish in the future.