A Man Of Many Talents - Dr. M. Appala Raju, Professor, HOD Of Finance Department, SCMS-COCHIN

Online, September 22, 2012 (Newswire.com) - His tastes vary all the way from Sherlock Holmes to tennis! However, Dr. M. Appala Raju likes his thrillers and sports only after his first love - Finance. He joined SCMS as Professor and Head of the Department of Finance in 2007. He earned his Doctorate and MBA from Andhra University, after which he accumulated over 20 years of teaching experience in Accounting, Finance and Strategy. Starting his career as a lecturer at Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management (GITAM), Visakhapatnam, he was later Associate Professor at the College of Management Studies, Vishakapatnam. Before joining SCMS-COCHIN, Dr Raju was working with Siva Sivani Institute of Management Hyderabad. . He also has many publications to his credit which includes an International Publication -A Book" on Marketing of Banking Services - a Strategic Approach for Sustainable Competitive advantage", published by VDM Publishers, Germany which is getting marketed across U.S., U.K. and Other European Countries.

For Dr. Raju, every day, every batch and every organisation is an opportunity for learning and growth. His teaching philosophy is simply to give complete clarity and understanding to the student, without which he believes his teaching is incomplete!

He says he chose to be with SCMS- COCHIN because of its ranking, and highly appreciative of the organisation's credentials, its work culture and management policies.

Talk to him about the finance sector, and Dr. Raju's voice is filled with enthusiasm. He says, "The Finance sector is the backbone of a nation's economy and a close indicator of the national GDP. A small development in this sector in India now has great global impact.

He encourages the students of the subject by telling them that opportunities in that field abound. However, he does caution them that a student in this field needs complete conceptual clarity and understanding to be successful. He also advises students to stay abreast of global developments in the field as well the business changes in the sector. The world of business is fast changing, making business education a vital need today. However, apart from functional knowledge, Dr. Raju also lays stress on a value system that is conducive to personal and organisational growth by saying, "The three most important values that professional needs today in our sector are - honesty, integrity and discipline." He believes that these values build character, which in turn helps to develop the readiness to cope with any kind of issue arising in an organisation.

With such an academic orientation, it comes as no surprise that Dr. Raju is an avid reader. He mostly reads periodicals related to management, especially Harvard Business Review, and is also fond of lighter reading like Sherlock Holmes. He is a music lover and on weekends he indulges in either of his two main hobbies - books or music. Whenever the urge to be out in the open takes him, he can be seen hitting tennis balls over the weekends. He is certainly a well-rounded individual that his students would do well to emulate.