Nalin Jain
Founding Class
GE Aviation
Country Director


Nalin Jain, from the founding class, says result orientation and a focus on people are key elements of success.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional life after the ISB?

I have over 16 years of professional experience in business management spanning India and South East Asia. I graduated in Mechanical Engineering and had an 8 year stint with French engineered materials conglomerate Saint – Gobain before joining the founding class of ISB.

Post ISB, I joined Bombardier in their Strategic Initiatives group to focus on developing business opportunities in India and South East Asia. Bombardier was a very exciting experience as I was literally starting from scratch and increasing Bombardier’s engagement with these emerging markets. On the personal front, it was lot of learning - I had to scale up my mindset to think large multi-million deals with significant engagement at the CXO level. I lead closure of 4-5 significant deals for Bombardier including three strategic alliances spread across all Bombardier businesses viz. Aerospace, Rail and Recreational Products. In 2004, the civil aviation sector in India started happening and that’s when I transitioned into an aerospace role at Bombardier.

After a successful stint of over three years at Bombardier, I joined GE Aviation to spearhead their activities in the civil aviation market in India. Compared to Bombardier, which was a strategy and business development role, my role in GE was more operational and focused on doing deals in India. Again I had a good run and was able to close some significant deals for GE in India. My success was rewarded and currently I am the Country Head for GE Aviation in India – including all our civil and military operations here.

Having passed out from ISB almost 10 years ago, how do you think the ISB has contributed to your career growth?

I think my ISB stint has delivered on all counts, including rapid growth in my career. The founding class was small and unique with a shared vision of making the school a success. If I look back today I think in a way all of us were entrepreneurs who decided to join the ISB when even the physical infrastructure was not ready. The strong bonding of the founding class and the network is alive even today. I remember my early days at Bombardier when I was a one-man army and I needed help on a tax issue or a media matter or a legal matter, I always had someone from my diverse batch who had the required experience and depth to help me out. Besides this, I think the ISB stint helped me look at the bigger picture, be comfortable outside my comfort zone and dream big. All this allowed me to scale up into a completely new industry – aviation.

Can you recall any particular instance or instances your classroom/peer learning at the ISB helped you solve a challenge?

There are numerous instances. As I said earlier – bottom-line is that the ISB gave me a huge network of people and even today if I need help on a subject I am not familiar with , my first go to person is someone from my class.

What is your vision for the school? What are the strengths that the school can leverage upon and areas it can improve on?

The ISB should be a top ranked business school, which grooms leaders to tackle business problems unique to emerging markets. It should grow to be a research driven global center of excellence helping create new business models, which are focused at the bottom of the pyramid. The ISB has a huge first mover advantage as truly the first International business school in India. It is backed by the best from academia and corporate worlds. The School needs to continue to leverage these strengths and maintain its brand image. One area I definitely think needs improvement is the rate of growth of the school. The need to touch a batch of 500 has put pressure on recruiting and as a result the quality of the class has been sacrificed. I am not against the size of the class but growth needs to be managed.

What do you think is the alumni’s role in building the school?

I think the school has made lot of efforts to integrate the alumni. Alumni is already helping the school in multiple areas – like recruitments, placements and connecting students with the corporate world. There was an idea to start a corpus to collect funds and launch scholarships for students. This never took off. This idea needs to be revisited.

Also I believe that more events at a chapter level need to be organised to improve engagement as it becomes difficult to bring everybody to Hyderabad on an ongoing basis.

What do you think is an area you can contribute in?

Time permitting, I would love to do more of the above. Other areas could be mentoring of students and maybe anything else where the school believes I can add value.

How do you balance your personal and professional life?

Working in a very global business, it is very difficult to manage across time zones. Some rules I follow to manage the balance – weekends are for the family and self - no blackberries. Weekdays are dedicated to work but dinner is always with the family if I am in town. I take at least two short vacations and one long vacation in a year.

Please share with us your secret for success?

My simple mantra for success is delivering what you have committed to, so that it gives you and your team a sense of achievement. As long as you have the result orientation without ignoring the softer side, which is, people – you are a great leader and will get what you go after.