Dr. Ajit Ranade Additional Director

Prof. Ranade is a noted economist. He received his PhD in Economics from the Brown University, USA.

Before that, he did Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, after completing B. Tech. in Electrical Engineering at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Prof. Ranade is a Vice-Chancellor and a former member of the Board of Management at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics.

Before joining the Institute as the Vice-Chancellor, he was the Group Executive President and Chief Economist with the Aditya Birla Group, a US$50B diversified multinational conglomerate.

His 32-year career has spanned both academic and corporate assignments. He has taught in universities in India and the USA. He has served as a member of several committees of the Reserve Bank of India and as a member of apex committees of national industry bodies such as the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). He was appointed as a member of the Economic Task Force for post-COVID economic recovery by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, India.

Prof. Ranade has many publications in reputed journals and is one of the authors of the recent award-winning book ‘Rising to the China Challenge’. He is also a regular columnist in leading financial newspapers and has numerous columns on different areas of the economy.