Tribute to Prof. Abhinandan Jain
By Manish Pajan, PGP 1998
Mr. Manish Pajan with Prof. Abhinandan Jain
Tell us how this Professor left a deep impression on your life.
From him I learnt the importance of disciplined, structured thinking and the power of focus. During a case discussion, Prof. AK Jain would often ask us in his trademark trenchant voice, “Who are you?” and “What is your objective?” While back then these questions would often stump me, I have realised with the passage of time how the questions were inviting us to be crystal clear about our point-of-view and exhorting us to stay laser-focused on our objective, goal or mission. Even now, when I find myself in meetings that meander or get mired in multiple entangled threads, revisiting Prof. Jain’s simple yet tremendously powerful questions invariably help me to shine the light on the way forward. In my experience, it is in these ways of thinking that IIMA grads tend to stand apart from the crowd.
Any particular incident or memory of him/her that you want to recount?
In September 2018, the HUL office in Andheri (Mumbai) hosted a felicitation ceremony for Prof. AK Jain, where a number of IIMA alumni across batches were present. I met Prof. Jain briefly and thanked him for his contribution to shaping my thinking. On a light note, I even remarked to him how different he seemed that day, far from his “tiger-like” persona I encountered back in the 1996-1998 period.
