Mr. Gautam Mahajan, President, Customer Value Foundation

Mr. Gautam Mahajan is an internationally acclaimed expert in strategy, general management (including Customer Value) and globalisation. He is President of Inter-Link Services Pvt. Ltd., an International Consulting Firm operating since 1987 and helping clients from America, Europe, Asia, Australia and India. Inter-Link helps companies enter Asia and India, especially in entry strategy, technology transfer, marketing, business development, and operations, and Indian companies with strategy, globalization, changing the mind-set and thinking through the future. Gautam has started the Customer Value Foundation to help companies with Total Customer Value Management (TOTAL CVM). His book Customer Value Investment: Formula for Sustained Business Success is a best seller. Mr Mahajan spoke to CEO’s from 25 countries on Customer Value in Spain in January 2008, and in Florida in February; and in June introduced TOTAL CVM to two US companies. This program is running successfully at the Tatas and Godrej. He is consulting in Europe in October.

His recent projects have been building a India strategy for the Tuck School of Business and for a major European distribution and sourcing company including acquisition in India, an European chemical manufacturer, a large US manufacturing company.

Mr. Mahajan has global affiliates, particularly in Customer Value Management. He has started an exciting new business concept called Total CVM. His associate in Argenine is the former Minister for Industries there.

Among overseas companies Mr Mahajan has worked with CVM associates are GE Capital, Stamford, CT; State farm Insurance, Bloomington, Ill; and Wisconsin Energies, Milwaukee, Wis.

Companies Inter-Link has been associated with include companies in the Fortune 50 list (some are not listed due to confidential agreements:
AUSTRALIA: BTR-Nylex EUROPE: APEAL •Azelis • Barodan • Bischof & Klein • Chicago Metallic • Cobelplast • Continental Can Europe • DRG? • Euromonitor Consultancy • European Union • Husky •Israel Chemicals • Klockner • Rexam (Bowater) • Solvay? • Sidel • Uniloy INDIA: Apollo Tyres • Bhutan Polythene Company • Chambal Fertilisers • Fibre Foils • Government of India • Gujarat Gas • Indian Aluminium • ITC • L&T • India Software Group • Khaitan Group • Mahanagar Gas• MilkFood • Orient Packaging • Pan Foods •Steel Authority of India •Uniplas •Tata Chemicals• Tata Fertilisers •Tata Power• Voltas • Zuari Industries JAPAN: Sumitomo • Toyo Seikan • Fanuc.

KOREA: A-Star • Korea Telecomm • Chean-An Knit • Hankook Dynamics • Mee Kang US: Alcoa • Continental Can • duPont• GE • GTE• Element K • International Finance Corp • MindBranch • Novartis• The Pace Consultants • Pioneer Hybrid Seed • Reliance Insurance •Reynolds Aluminium • Rockwell • Sealed Air • Sonoco • Schotland Business Research • Sun Micro • TransFresh•Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth • University of Wisconsin Valmont •Xerox• Wearever

Mr. Mahajan worked in the US for 17 years with Continental Group, the world’s largest packaging company (then a Fortune 50 company) and ran their plastics businesses. He is one of the inventors of the PET petaloid bottle and noise control kits. He commercialized the half liter PET bottle, aseptic products such as puddings and yogurts and the co extruded plastics business including ready to eat foods and soups. He spent time in California in 1998-2000 helping British dotcom companies.

Mr. Mahajan is past Regional President of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, and was Chairman, PlastIndia Committee, Vice President All India Plastics Manufacturers Association, Trustee Plastics Institute of America. He was a member of the US India think tank. He is currently National Executive VP of IACC. Among his honors is a Fellowship from Harvard Business School and Illinois Institute of Technology. He also has 18 US patents. He was honored by the Illinois Institute of Technology with its Distinguished Alumni award. Recently, he spoke at the Center for American and International Law in Dallas to an audience of 35 countries on India, at Berlin in 2006 at the European Fine Chemicals Conference, the IACC-CAIL-US National Law Institute seminar in Delhi in May 2007. He spoke to CEO’s from 26 European companies on Customer Value.He delivered an address at the Schotland conference in February 2008. He will be conducting a workshop on Total CVM in Los Angeles in June 2008. He was written up in the Wall Street Journal for his study on the American Business Experience in India

Mr Mahajan is a graduate of IIT Madras, where he was an Institute Merit Scholar. He has a Master’s degree in Mechanics and has completed his PhD coursework from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and has an MBA from Suffolk University.

Mr. Mahajan is on the board of Gilbert Tweed and Marigold, a subsidiary of Azelis SA

Mr. Mahajan has spoken earlier at the US India Joint Business Council in Washington on the American Business Experience in India, an Inter-Link –Xerox study that was featured in the Wall Street Journal. He has been a featured speaker at several international conferences.

More information can be had from Inter-Link website: www.interlinkindia.net or by writing to Mahajan@interlinkindia.net (telephone +91 98100 60368)

M K Rasgotra, Former Foreign Secretary

Born on 11 September 1924, Mr. Maharajakrishna Rasgotra was educated at Government College, Lahore from where he took the Master’s degree in English literature in 1946, and at Wadham College, Oxford. He was a member of the Punjab Education Service till September 1949, when he entered the newly constituted Indian Foreign Service (IFS).

In his early years in the IFS he held posts in India's Embassies at Paris, Washington DC and Kathmandu. From 1958 to 1962, he represented Indian on the U.N. Trusteeship Council, the Decolonization Committee and several other U.N. bodies. He was member of India’s delegations to several sessions of the U.N. General Assembly. At the U.N., Mr. Rasgotra also dealt with questions pertaining to International Security, Development Cooperation, Disarmament and Nuclear Arms Control etc.

Between August 1962 and September 1967, Mr. Rasgotra held important positions in the Ministry of External Affairs at New Delhi, where he dealt with India’s neighbours and made a notable contribution in the evolution and implementation of India’s policies towards neighbours.

He was India's Ambassador to Morocco (and concurrently to Tunisia) in 1967-69. Several high appointments in India’s diplomatic hierarchy followed : viz. Deputy Chief of Mission (with personal rank of Ambassador) in the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C. from 1969 to 1972, Acting High Commissioner of India in London in 1972-73, and successively India's Ambassador to Nepal (1973-76), the Netherlands (1977-1979) and France (1979-1982). While India’s ambassador to France, Mr. Rasgotra was also India’s Ambassador to UNESCO, where he made important contribution to that Organization's educational, social and cultural policies.

M. Rasgotra was Foreign Secretary to the Government of India from 1982 to 1985. The period saw heightened Indian diplomatic activity : India hosted the Seventh Non-Aligned Summit in New Delhi in March 1983, and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in October 1983. He was closely involved in the preparation of the Six-Nation Appeal on Nuclear Disarmament (1984) and the subsequent Six-Nation Summit in New Delhi in January 1985. As India’s Foreign Secretary, he made a signal contribution to the founding of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). His tenure as Foreign Secretary from 1982 to 1985 was marked by a renewal of Indo-American relations, sustained negotiations with Pakistan and a tentative opening to China.

Air Commodore Jasjit Singh AVSM, VrC, VM (retd)

(Awarded Padma Bhushan by the President of India for outstanding service to the nation in the field of defence and strategic affairs) Jasjit Singh joined the Indian Air Force in 1954 and served in command and staff appointments as a fighter pilot in peace and war before retiring in 1988 in the rank of Air Commodore. Decorated by President of India thrice while in IAF for distinguished service of an exceptional order and gallantry in the face of enemy, he served as Director Operations at Air Headquarters before being deputed to Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi, India’s premier think tank on strategic and security issues, where he was Director for 14 crucial years (1987-2001) during which the world and India underwent seminal transformation. Founder director of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, he currently heads an independent think tank Centre for Air Power Studies in New Delhi.

Jasjit Singh, MA (History), F.Ae.S.I., is one of the leading strategic/defence experts in India. Author/contributing editor of nearly three dozen books including Air Power in Modern Warfare (1985); Non-provocative Defence (1989); Nuclear India (1998), India's Defence Spending (2000), Air Power and Joint Operations (2003), Iraq War (2004), Asian Defence Review 2006, Defence From the Skies: Indian Air Force Through 75 Years (2007), he has published extensively on strategic and security issues. Has lectured regularly at defence and war colleges in India and abroad (USA, USSR, China, France, Germany, NATO, Italy, etc.) on strategic and security issues. He is Fellow of World Academy of Art and Science, and Fellow of Aeronautical Society of India. He is/has been:

• Convenor of the Task Force to set up the National Security Council, 1998 and Member of National Security Advisory Board, 1990 91, and 1998-2001.
• Member of the international "Commission for a New Asia"
• Member of the "International Commission for Peace and Food".
• Consultant to the Standing Committee on Defence of the Indian Parliament.

Advisor to the 11th Finance Commission of India.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies Centre for Policy Research

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Centre for Policy Research. He has served as a member of the Policy Advisory Group headed by the Foreign Minister of India. Before that, Professor Chellaney was an adviser to India’s National Security Council until January 2000, serving as convenor of the External Security Group of the National Security Advisory Board.

A specialist on international security and arms control issues, Professor Chellaney has held appointments at the Harvard University, the Brookings Institution, the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the Australian National University. He is the author of five books, the latest being Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan (HarperCollins). Another recent publication is a smaller, 100-page book, On the Frontline of Climate Change: International Security Implications (KAF, 2007), with Heela Najibullah. He has published research papers, among others, in International Security, Orbis, Survival, Washington Quarterly, Security Studies and Terrorism.

Professor Chellaney is also a newspaper columnist and television commentator. He regularly contributes opinion articles to the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Japan Times, the Asian Age, the Hindustan Times and the Times of India. In 1985, he won a Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club (OPC), New York.

Specialisation
International Security, Arms Control and Disarmament, Relations among the Great Powers, Asian Security, Energy and Climate Security, Counterterrorism

T K Arun, Editor, Opinion of The Economic Times

T K Arun is Editor, Opinion of The Economic Times, India’s leading business paper with a circulation of nearly 700,000 every day. He writes a fortnightly column, Cursor, on the paper's edit page.

He has been the paper's resident editor at Delhi, headed the economy bureau and looked after the editorial page in another stint in the past. He has been with the paper since 1994, except for a two-and-a-half year stint with the dot com world during 1999-2001, when he edited an online portal called Narad online.

He has worked as a technical advisor at the Kerala State Planning Board, before beginning his career in journalism in 1992 at the Observer of Business and Politics, New Delhi.

He did his Master's in economics from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.