The University of Lucknow in its more than a century old legacy of academic repute as a State University of Uttar Pradesh is headed by Prof. Alok Kumar Rai, the 41st Vice-Chancellor, whose scholarly erudition and administrative cogency is a living testimony to his pre-eminence as head of the institution. He is a professor of Management at the Institute of Management Studies, Banaras Hindu University. He has been the Vice-Chancellor, additional charge of Dr B. R. Ambedkar University, Agra, Sampoornananda Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya, Varanasi, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti Language University, Lucknow and Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow.

As the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lucknow, Prof. Rai has laid emphasis on academic excellence and quality research that has positioned the institution’s credence in line with the ever-changing measures of academic excellence in contemporary times. His visionary leadership is a way to nurture and embolden the idea of knowledge creation, one that is concomitant to the larger vision of the University’s motto of ‘light and learning’. In his commitment to lead by example, he has left no stone unturned to raise the bar of excellence and to nurture the quintessential human spirit of knowing ‘oneself better’ through the responses of the human intellect.

In his second term as Vice-Chancellor he continues to be a driving force that has shaped the institutional overall development and has facilitated the execution of several policies and programmes necessary to the working environment of the University. Keeping this view in mind, Prof. Rai has strengthened the core aspects of academic, administrative and financial reforms that play a vital role in the onward progress of the university. Prof. Alok Kumar Rai in his able leadership has provided the necessary bulwark to maximise human potential and to handhold a reasoned aspiration to make way for human values, one that finds resonance in the University’s achievements of a triple crown status, wherein the University was accorded A++by NAAC, UGC Category 1 status as well as to have stood amongst the top hundred institutions in the NIRF rankings all India and 32nd among State Public funded institutions.

Prof. Alok Kumar Rai is an illustrious academic in the field of management studies. His association with the Institute of Management Studies, Banaras Hindu University is a place of his earlier academic association, wherein he was serving as the Professor of Management. Prof. Rai in his wide ranging professional and academic experience has held several administrative responsibilities in his institute besides continuing as member of policy planning committee, faculty council, departmental council, departmental research committees etc.

An erudite scholar, Professor Rai’s contribution and expertise in the areas of customer relationship management, marketing management, and entrepreneurship development is greatly avowed as path-breaking and scholarly. His research interests remarkably corroborate to the academic insight as to how Management Studies could be read as a discipline in varied light. His research primarily holds ground in the areas of customer relationship modelling, customer loyalty engineering, service quality architecture, customer satisfaction portfolio design amongst others.

Prof Rai’s exemplary contribution to the field of Management Studies is a testimony to his calling as an academic. He is an extremely well published professor, who in his passionate pursuance of scholarship has contributed much to the field of existing knowledge. He has over 75 publications which include six authored and four edited books and numerous book chapters, articles and research papers in the leading academic journals of consequence. He has been instrumental in leading some profound research inquiries in the realm of customer relationship management, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, business ethics, and management education.

The role of an academic is to facilitate a keen spirit of enquiry and to empower lives through ideas of consequence. It is in this light that a roadmap that ascertains an onward trajectory fulfilling the concerns of academic and intellectual priorities is something of a quality championed by Prof. Alok Kumar Rai. The furtherance of this idea was given due fillip by Prof. Rai in streamlining and standardising the curriculum which gained recognition with his publications that brought to purview the core ideas towards customer relationship management in India.