Dr. Rajiv Agarwal has done his Bachelors in Accounting (B.Com) from Sydenham College of Commerce. His Masters in Management Studies (MMS in Finance and Marketing) is from SPJIMR. He has earned his Ph.D. in Family Business from BITS, Pilani (Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani). He has also attended the Owner/President Management Program (OPM) at Harvard Business School and executive education program for growing businesses at Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
In 2019, Dr. Rajiv Agarwal became the first professor from outside Harvard Business School to create and author, Honey Heritage, the first family business simulation in the world, published by Harvard Business Publishing.
His Ph.D. research is on the successors choices in joining family businesses in India. He teaches Family Business, Entrepreneurship and Strategy across multiple programs including the full time MBA, Executive Education and part-time MBA programs.
He holds certificates in Family Business Advising (CBFA) and Wealth Advising (CFWA), from the Family Firm Institute (FFI), Boston, USA.
As a Family Business Consultant, Dr. Rajiv Agarwal has advised families on areas like governance, succession, business strategy and business continuity. He also has over 20 years’ experience of working in his own family business before he joined academics in 2013.
He has trained faculty at various institutions for case writing and Simulations. He has published multiple cases with Richard Ivey School of Business, Canada, and his cases are used by B-Schools extensively all over the world, including in China where his cases have been translated into Mandarin. He has also been recognized for having two of his cases amongst the top 20 cases sold annually, by Ivey for each of the last three years since 2014.
Besides SPJIMR, he has been a visiting Professor at Indian Institutes of Management at Kozhikode and Indore.
He has published various articles on family business in The Economic Times, Hindustan Times, Business Line and in Business Magazines like Fortune India, Forbes and Business Today. He has been called upon, as an authority on Family Businesses, to comment on various family issues in the media, including the Economic Times and Hindustan Times. He has spoken on various forums on family businesses and family issues in India and outside India.