Dr. Rakesh Patra is an Associate Professor and is the head of the International Relations department at KLH Global business school. He is also the professor incharge of research and development at the institution. Dr.Rakesh patra has acquired his Ph.d in Marketing from Centurion University of Technology and Management and completed his MBA from KIIT School of Management (KSOM), Bhubaneswar. Prior to starting his career in academia, Dr.Rakesh has the experience in working with corporate organizations like Reliance and Tata. As an educator, Dr.Rakesh Patra has inspired and mentored countless students, fostering a deep passion for learning and intellectual curiosity in the domain of marketing. His teaching methods combine rigor and innovation, empowering students to develop critical thinking skills and approach complex topics with clarity and confidence.

KLH Global Business School

You have worked in various organizations previously. What is something that excites you about KLH Global business school and walking with the institution in the journey ?

What I found unique about KL University is the support it provides. KL university is a place where they nurture your talent. If you are good in one field, KLU tries to nurture the talent by providing exclusive training and financial support to nurture and explore the talent. That part is what I like the most about KL University.

You have started your career in the corporate industry and What motivated you to pursue a career in academia?

Initially, I worked five years in corporate, in various multinational companies. At the same time, I was also connected with many institutions as a guest lecturer, and as an industry expert. I was mentoring students right over there. Somehow, I felt that it is my inertia to be a teacher. 

As an Incharge of International Relationships, how do you manage the needs and expectations of students, management and organizations at the same time?

My primary focus is to teach my students to give the best quality learning, give the best foot forward.So that is my primary responsibility. But I've spent more than 13 years in academics. So I have got plenty of experience in education administration level.That helped me to continue my administrative job and the leadership role, related to academics. So currently, I'm handling international relations and we have to tie up with various universities abroad. We have to see their credit system, their education system, and we try to match it with the Indian education system. My teaching experience helped me to do all this.

What steps do you take to assess and match students skills, interests, and career goals with suitable internship or placement opportunities?

I'm not a person who will judge the students according to their results in the examination. I don't want to judge the students with those three or two hours of tests. Their passion, participation and their commitment towards their interested areas is what really matters. During my sessions with the students,I try to know which interest area they want to explore. So accordingly, I will train and suggest some certification courses for them. I teach a Marketing Management course to MBA students and there are many 20 or 25 students that are interested in digital marketing. personally counsel them, one to one.

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Can you discuss your experience handling international relations, what are the major challenges of being in this role and how do you manage them?

It is a new initiative. Only four to five years back institutions have started this international exchange and dual degree programs. KL Global Business School started its international operations in March 2022 and it is a new thing for us and with our experience we have signed more than 80 universities into our partner universities abroad. We try to understand their education pattern and how to work on mapping it with our Indian education system. Nanyang Technological University and Asian Institute of Technology are one of them. So we have identified many universities with whom we can partner. Also, for the students who are interested in going abroad, it will be a great experience. There are few challenges. When students visit other nations, their adaptation to that pattern, culture and the education, the examination pattern might become challenging and sometimes the accent also can be a problem. To overcome that challenge, we started an orientation program in which before sending students to a foreign University, we welcome professors from the partnered university, and they teach a few modules to the students here.In this way students experience the global teaching methodology.

What kind of international opportunities, in terms of foreign exchange studies or training are provided to the students at KLH business school?

We have divided our international opportunity in various categories. The first category is an international educational camp for 15 days. Recently we took our students to the Asian Institute of Technology - AIT for a 15-day educational tour. During those 15 days, they will be taught various management courses from their faculty and after completion of a project, students will be receiving a certificate. And the second opportunity is, international internship for one month to 45 days. Few students want to do an internship in Singapore. We try to contact our partner university; we try to provide them a mentor in the partner university and then the students can move from one month to 45 days and do the internship over there by mapping with a corporate organization. The international opportunity is the sem abroad program. Students of MBA and BBA, they can go to partner university like AIT, Nanyang University, American Business School, Paris campus, spend one semester there. These are the three ways this international exposure opportunities we are providing to our students.

As a newly established college, can you throw some light upon the significance and benefits of maintaining good international relationships and how it helps the students?

As we have established our new campus here in Hyderabad which is a hub for all global companies. All the international giants are coming to Hyderabad and It's not the physical presence, their workforce and also their culture that is coming over here. It’s a global culture that is being developed. Unlike just providing regular BBA and MBA courses, we want to give something new and we want to provide the student community something that is really valuable. So that prompted our leadership board to launch the GBS, a global program. It's just not sending our students abroad for global exposure. The intention behind KL GBS is that by establishing global level education standards here in Hyderabad, we want to give the international experience of different working environments and cultures for the students and when they go to foreign countries for their job etc, they should not feel new.

Can you share with us some MOU’s and collaborations that KL Global Business School, Hyderabad had made with international organizations and institutions?

We have collaborations with more than 80 universities for study abroad. Few of them are, Asian Institute of Technology - Thailand, Nanyang Technological University - Singapore, California State University - US and American Business School - Paris campus. These are the leading universities; we have tied up for our semester abroad program and we are under the process of signing MOU with many more universities.

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How well does KL Global Business School, Hyderabad promote research and scholarly activities among students and faculty?

Apart from International relationships, I'm the head of the R&D for KLH business school. We have like three layers of research. First layer is the faculty research. We encourage our faculty to conduct research and support them in publishing articles in good publication houses. They can apply for a project like ICSSR, UGC AICTE and many other projects. So, faculty are involved with many projects and research activities. We give them this assignment, okay, then other assignment, then other teaching assignment, We also encourage our students to conduct research and publish the research paper by inculcating this in the curriculum. Every MBA student has to publish a paper in a reputed Journal. We have more than 45 Ph.D. scholars and they conduct research under the supervision of our eminent Professors. All kinds of support and funding is provided whenever required according to the feasibility of the project.