Raja has been engaged, for over 40 years in business management, management education and management of educational institutions.
For over 20 years, he worked in Metal Box, India, a subsidiary of Metal Box, U K. Starting with Marketing Research, he moved to the broad range of marketing services and commercial functions. He headed the commercial operations of a unit-covering pricing, production planning and scheduling, materials planning and materials procurement. Later, he was the Marketing Manager of the Paper and Plastics Operations, one of the two operational divisions of the company and was a member of the company’s top Operations Committee on that Division.
At Metal Box, Raja got involved in the company’s training programmes and also in the training activities of the Bombay Management Association (BMA).He served BMA as Chairman of the Research Committee, Chairman of the Editorial Committee of BMA Review and as Chairman of Committee on Linkages with management institutes. He was, for many years, a member of BMA’s Education Committee and Extension Services Committee and conducted several programmes for the Association. For two years, Raja designed and coordinated BMA’s prestigious Mahabaleswar programme for senior executives.
Raja has also conducted programmes for Ahmedabad Management Association and has served as their Academic Advisor on the starting of a programme on International Business.
While working with Metal Box at Mumbai, Raja was Visiting Faculty at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, then the only institution offering a post graduate degree course of Bombay University in management studies. He designed and conducted for six years a full semester course in Social Marketing as part of the part time degree course in Marketing Management (MMM) at the Jamnalal Bajaj institute. He has also designed and run full semester courses in special application areas in marketing including Hospitality Marketing,(for college of catering and hotel management), Insurance Marketing (National Insurance Academy) and Tourism Marketing ( Garware Institute). During this period he was also Visiting Faculty at the Tata Institute of Management and Tata Management Training Centre.
In 1985, Raja moved full time into teaching and educational administration as the First Director of the University of Mumbai’s Garware Institute of Career Education and Development, a unique model of university-industry partnership. He worked with the Institute for five and a half years before moving to the Somaiya Institute as its Director and later becoming the Director of the S P Jain Institute of Management Studies and Research, rated as one among the best ten management institutes in India.
Raja has been instrumental in the establishment of The GIDC Rajju Shroff ROFEL Institute of Management Studies and its sister institution, GR Business School. These institutions have been started and run by the Rotary Foundation with support from the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation and substantial funding from Rajju Shroff, Chairman of United Phosphorous.
Raja continues his association with these institutions. He is on the Advisory Board and Managing Committee of the Garware institute and on the Advisory Board of the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute. He is also a member of the Governing Council and member of the Academic Council of the GIDC Rajju Shroff Rofel Management Institute and the GR Business School.
Raja has also spent many years in corporate training and consulting. He has designed and run courses based on interactive management simulation games, both industry specific and general purpose , for companies like Raymonds, Bharat Petroleum and Gujarat Ambuja.
For 5 years, Raja was a Consultant to the Oman Resources Development Consultants. He did several projects for business houses in Oman, starting with marketing studies and going on to full feasibility studies for the introduction of new products. One such study was the setting up of a University Centre at Muscat for the Wollongong University , Australia.
While at the Garware Institute, Raja visited community colleges in the US at the invitation of the American Association of Community Colleges and attended their annual conference in Washington where he made a presentation on emerging trends in vocational higher education in India.
In 2003, he spent time at the Kellogg Business School of the North Western University and the Weather head School of Business- Case Western University, to interact with the Dean and faculty and know of practices and academic processes that would help ROFEL Trust start its new GR Business School.
Raja is a member and Past President of the Rotary Club of Bombay West. Along with a few other Rotarians he has been involved in the club’s sponsorship and supporting activities for the Bombay West Chair in Management of Non Profit Organizations at the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies University.
Raja was one of the three members of Rotary International President Kalyan Banerjee’s India Secretariat during the presidential tenure in 2011-12. He was also an active participant in Rotary ‘s South Asia Conference for development and peace held in Colombo in September 2011. He is currently a member of the Rotary South Asia Council’s Collaborative Action Group set up by President Kalyan and an ex-officio member of its Panel of Advisors.
Raja’s teaching interests include marketing application areas, Business Ethics, Business Strategy through simulation, Indian Ethos and its relevance to management and faculty development.
Raja is a Life member of Indo American Society.
