Ananth Ram is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Education & Quality for Botho University. He has overall responsibility for all activities related to education, research, technology, quality assurance and learning resources. When Ananth first joined the institution in 2002, it was a small computer training institute operating from the Main Mall in Gaborone. Today, NIIT has been transformed to Botho University, a multi-disciplinary tertiary institution with 5000 students and 400 staff members spread over three different campuses in Botswana and one in Lesotho. He was a key member of the team that led the institution through this rapid evolution.
Ananth was only 3 months old when his father moved the family from their native India to Botswana on the advice of his brother who had already been living in the country for some years. Raja Ram acquired the accounting firm Acumen in 1980 with nine clients, a single room rented office and no employees. In 1992 Acumen became the Botswana member of Grant Thornton International and today is ranked the third largest accounting firm in Botswana with a present staff complement of 148. Raja Ram is the Managing Partner and President.
The desire to be the best at what you do is definitely something that came out of my upbringing and that message came especially from my parents.
“The desire to be the best at what you do is definitely something that came out of my upbringing and that message came especially from my parents,” says Ananth. “My Dad used to say he would never pressure me to do something but insisted that whatever I chose to do that I must strive to be the absolute best at it.”
He grew up in a very entrepreneurial family and says that his father has always believed in a 25 hours a day, 8 days a week lifestyle. During this time his mother was a physics lecturer and Ananth recalls that every evening both his parents would come home and continue working together in the study, so the value of a strong work ethic, of education and entrepreneurship were constant presences in his childhood. Moreover, Ananth is the oldest person of his generation within his extended family here in Botswana so he’s always felt like he had to set an example for his younger relatives.
Ananth schooled in Gaborone for his entire childhood, doing primary at Northside and then secondary at Maru-a-pula. After completing his O’Levels he moved to the United States to do his final year of high school upon the advice of his cousin’s husband. Incidentally, this cousin is the daughter of the uncle that advised Ananth’s father to move to Botswana. Ananth says that the connection of relatives around the world is beneficial to all of them in that it gives them opportunities to visit and gain exposure to different parts of the world.
Ananth attended Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, which at the time was ranked the number 9 university in the US. With regards to what he can say comparing and contrasting higher education in the US where he studied and here in Botswana, Ananth says the American system transforms its students. It emphasises becoming a well-rounded person: “I went from being a relatively shy boy to being a confident young man.”
From my experience with growing Botho University, I know quality education doesn’t have to be so expensive.
The problem he sees with American higher learning is that it’s too expensive and he feels that a great deal of that money is wasted on expensive buildings and other things that don’t necessarily improve the quality of education. “From my experience with growing Botho University, I know quality education doesn’t have to be so expensive,” insists Ananth. “For those who can afford it, higher learning in the US is good but it doesn’t have to be so expensive.”
Ananth says he used to overload himself with modules every year because the amount of money his family was spending on his education weighed heavily on his mind. For instance he studied two languages even though they were only required to study one. “One term of my education in the US cost more than my father’s entire education,” he says by way of putting things in perspective.
Driven to make the most of his expensive education, Ananth graduated from Northwestern University summa cum laude (top 3% of his class) in 2001 with a Bachelors of Arts – double major in Integrated Science Program plus Computing and Information Systems.
Armed with a top Degree from a top university, the young graduate seemed certain to land a top job. He had interviews lined up with dozens of companies that he narrowed down to a list of 12. From that he chose one and he was meant to start work in mid-September. Then fate intervened – the world trade centre building in New York was destroyed in an act of terrorism and the nation came to a standstill, including Chicago. The company reneged on the offer they had made him and the same happened to all of his peers. He even approached all 11 of the other companies he had shortlisted but they all said that they had reneged on all their offers. After a few months of searching for a job unsuccessfully Ananth went back to Botswana and began working for his father’s company Grant Thornton.
Sometime later he joined NIIT as a Quality Assurance Manager. At this time his parents had only a minority stake in the business and were not playing any role at management level. “I didn’t end up in NIIT by design but I am very passionate about education,” Ananth says, adding that as the oldest of his generation he was always helping his younger siblings and cousins with schoolwork and often jokes to friends that under different circumstances he would have become a schoolteacher. His family took over the NIIT franchise when the other partners decided to divest in it and at the age of just 22 Ananth became a Director in the organisation.
Ananth was there throughout the evolution from NIIT the training institute to Botho University the centre of higher learning.
Ananth was there throughout the evolution from NIIT the training institute to Botho University the centre of higher learning. He emphasises that it was the start of NIIT receiving Government sponsorship in 2007 that allowed management to begin investing in the growth of the institution.
“I emphasise passion and hard work, not just with me but with everyone in the organisation because in the start we would put in 15, 16 hour days and we would roll up our sleeves and literally fix computers overnight when we had to,” enthuses Ananth.
“So passion, hard work and having a strong team beside you that can give the same level of commitment to their work that you do is what’s most important for an organisation to succeed.”
The well-travelled Ram has worked on various projects in the United States of America, the United Arab Emirates, India, Mauritius, South Africa and Botswana, spanning across a number of industries including consulting, software development, commodities broking and education. He holds a Master’s in Business Administration from INSEAD in France and Singapore.
Ananth comes from a close-knit extended family which includes around 80 people here in Gaborone alone. Ananth coordinates a weekly Hindu prayer meeting that takes place at a family member’s home but of course not everyone is always there for these prayer meetings. Moreover, with this large extended family there are always social gatherings keeping everyone busy and spending time with each other.
As for his immediate family, they all work very closely at Botho University. His father is the Chancellor; his mother is the Vice-Chancellor; His younger brother is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Estates and Infrastructure; and his wife is the Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Internationalisation & Communications.
His wife is currently pregnant with their first child and the baby is due to be born in January 2016. Interestingly, he and his wife met through what Ananth describes as a modern arranged marriage. He created a profile on a website for single people looking to get married. His parents then took over the profile and searched for a wife from the same kind of background. They found him a woman, the two of them started communicating in March 2007 and by September that same year they had gotten married.
In his spare time Ananth enjoys gardening and has a large backyard garden which he boasts allows him to be self-sufficient in most vegetables. He has a German shepherd called Kaizen – Japanese word meaning ‘change for the better’ – and the two of them go for walks every morning.
