Mr Jain, 43, is currently Sandy and Morton Goldman Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Kellogg, which is a part of Chicago’s Northwestern University.

He beat 120 others to get the prestigious job and his appointment came only after the school conducted a thorough national search for the right candidate. The school said it only wanted the best person for the job and as such, had no preference for an internal candidate as opposed to an external one.

Mr Jain succeeds Donald Jacobs, who held the post for 26 years and turned Kellogg into one of the world’s top management schools. Mr Jain, who joined the school in 1986, was quoted as saying, "I'm delighted. Kellogg is a thriving plant that is being handed over to me, so it's a very high level of responsibility to keep it healthy and growing." Mr Jain starts his new job on July 1st.

Brought up in North-Eastern India where his airline-officer father was posted, Mr Jain got his undergraduate and masters degrees in statistics from Guwahati University, and further took an M.S. in operations research and a Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Texas, Dallas.

Despite his fabulous achievements, he still can’t drive. He joked, "I must be the only Indian in the United States who hasn't learnt to drive even 18 years after coming here. So I live on the campus."

Mr Jain still has strong links with India. Along with another famous business schoool, Wharton, Kellogg created the Indian School of Business, and Mr Jain spends five days a month in Hyderabad where the school is based.

On behalf of all NRIs, NRIOL congratulates Mr Jain on his great achievement.

For more information on Mr Jain, please visit the following links on the Kellogg website.

- nriol.com report

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