Narayanamurthy leads the pack

Chennai: For the third year in succession, business school students has voted in favour of Infosys CEO N R Narayanamurthy as the most admired businessman.

Following him, but at a considerable distance, are the second-generation Ambanis voted as the second-most admired entity. The survey was conducted by brand-comm, a brand consulting and a public relations firm.

According to the survey, Narayanamurthy is admired most for being a visionary and for his value systems. The Ambani sons seem to be admired for the same qualities as their father such as entrepreneurship, visionary and leadership skills.

Says brand-comm CEO Sridhar Ramanujam: "The power of personal branding is evident by the fact that the organisation is revered as much as its leader. Also, the success of a company is very much tied to the personal brand of the leader. The charisma of the leader rubs on to image of the company and is admired just the same. So, it helps if the leader consciously works towards personal branding."

This study by brand-comm was undertaken with the objective of getting an insight into companies and business leaders admired by the management students in India and to give a cross-sectional view of the psyche of B-school students on the threshold of placement. The idea was also to study the power of personal branding.Ten business management schools (including five Indian Institutes of Management) participated in the study and a total of 270 final year B-school students responded to a self-filling questionnaire.