Information about the Entrepreneur

A leader with clarity of intent and passion driven by purpose, Rama Shankar Pandey graduated from NIT Calicut. His classmates called him Entrepreneur of the Class. In 2006, he joined Hella Asia Singapore to lead its Indian Independent Aftermarket Start-Up and received the Employee of the Year recognition in 2009 for Asia, as his start-up expanded to 100 members with 100 partner offices nationwide, three regional offices and over 30,000 secondary retail business associations, and Automotive Repair Workshops.

Today, he is not only one of the youngest Managing Director in the country at Hella Lightning Ltd. But he also heads the Region Asia for Hella Germany and he contributes to global SOE division of Hella Germany as Board Member in the executive management of this division. He successfully turned the loss-making entity to a nationally awarded, one of the most innovative company in India and among Top 25 Great Manufacturing Places to Work, mainly through business model innovation and gave it a larger social purpose. As Director of the Indian Set-up at Hella Asia Singapore, he built the foundation of Hella’s Indian Aftermarket start-up from scratch.

Rama was born in Madhubani, Bihar in 1977. In his early days, he was greatly influenced by Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former President of India who inspired him to work in the area of creating wealth for development and skilling of India’s vast pool of unemployed youths. The passion to make a difference in skilling India was so deeply imbibed by Dr. Kalam in Rama that while he was leading a business at BOSCH India, he and his College Friends along with professionals from many corporates like BOSCH, WIPRO, INFOSYS, LUCENT, MOTOROLA and many in Bangalore founded a selffunded trust named “www.prayaas.org” in 1998, with the purpose of skilling and educating underprivileged youths.

Rama also holds a Diploma in Business Finance from the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India and completed the Executive General Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He also completed AIMA’s flagship Global Advance Management Programme by the University of California at Silicon Valley. He is the chairman of Aftermarket committee at Auto Component Manufacturer Association (ACMA) and also Chairman- ACMA Connected vehicle Cross Functional Team (CFT). He is Chairman, Road Safety Sub Committee at Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) and Chairman, North Regional Task Force on Road Safety at Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). He is Governing Council Member at Automotive Skill Development Council (ASDC). He is also Founder Drive smart drive safe & Prayaas Bangalore.

In 2011, just a year after Rama took the leadership position, Hella India Lighting was just recovering from a long legal dispute and complete loss of business. Rama seized the opportunity to relook the company’s strategy and worked on a business model innovation. At that time, the commercial vehicles industry was still using light and signaling devices which were 20-25 years behind time in terms of safety technology. He adopted a Blue Ocean strategy with the main goal of arresting the alarming number of road deaths in India. Thus, he created a new Vision of the Company, “Technology of Tomorrow for the Life of Today” on Indian Roads, which became a shared vision among employees, suppliers and customers of the company, instantly as it addressed to solve a real life problem beyond business, yet had a very strong business case for the company.