Sandip Pradhan, CIO, Exide Industries bags PhD in SCM in automobile battery industry

The pandemic was an unprecedented challenge for CXOs and while it disrupted the work-life balance, many CXOs took this as an opportunity to reskill and upskill themselves and all of this came about with the encouragement of the support structure that they build around them.

Sandip Pradhan, VP – IT & CIO, Exide Industries recently bagged a PhD in Supply Chain Management in the automobile battery Industry. He studied from the Assam Kaziranga University, Jorhat, India.

The Title of the study was, ‘Strategic analysis of decision making in operations and supply chain domain for automobile battery Industry in India’. The objective of the research work was to identify the key strategic issues in the operations and supply chain domain pertaining to the automobile battery industry in India; To evaluate the impact of the identified factors on the ‘Demand of Automobile Battery’ in India based on market dynamics and finally to assess decision modelling techniques on how to take control of the cost and availability of the products.

Organizational success depends on superior design, planning and execution of their Supply Chain. “Now, Organizations are not competing with their competitors. Instead, it can be said, the supply chain of Organization A is competing with the supply chain of Organization B and others. So, my PhD knowledge definitely will help to become a transformation leader for any organization towards Supply Chain,” he said.

When asked on how will the PhD degree help him in serving his responsibilities as a CIO, he said, “I would like to see myself as a Chief Innovation Officer, not Chief Information Officer. The experience from PhD will play a crucial role in that direction and it will help me in systematically exploring innovation and spearheading business transformation. Also, it will motivate my team members for developing learning habits,” 

Pradhan fully utilized holidays, weekends. He tapped into using tech to save time and capture actionable knowledge during these days. I have not forgotten to give “Time to myself” and at the same time have not compromised with the working timelines by prior work bucketing. “I appreciate my friends, colleagues and family members for being encouraging and supportive,” 

However Pradhan doesnt want to stop at that. He is also pursuing further studies. “I am exploring more innovative concepts on SCM and contributing to the community through writing research papers and articles. I am also studying on AI,” he informed.

The thesis was authored by Pradhan under the guidance of Dr Siddhartha Bhattacharya, Associate Professor, School of Business, The Assam Kaziranga University and  Dr Radha Tamal Goswami, Director, Techno International New Town (Formerly Techno India College of Technology), Kolkata, WB, India.

The PhD Degree will be conferred during the convocation ceremony to be held at the university in December’21.