Good day, Sivarama Anandha Krishnan M. I'm Arjun. I've had a look through your background and your professional record. I'm interested in hearing more about your work and how you see yourself fitting in here with our faculty. Ready to start?

Yeah.

Could you briefly introduce your professional journey in academia?

OK.

Good evening myself Shivam Ananda Krishnan. I have done my UMM Btech Mechanical Engineering and M Tech Industrial Engineering from College of Engineering Indy and I am also a gold medalist during my master's degree and I have complete I have submitted my thesis.

Please

On the title of UH, e-commerce revenue management game theoretic analysis.

Of your food delivery platform contracts and strategic interaction between.

Gig workers.

Restaurants and e-commerce uh platform.

I have submitted my thesis.

Yeah.

Thanks for

Hello.

Good day, Professor. Let's begin. Your academic background and experience will be the focus. I aim to evaluate your teaching, research, and expertise related to the Professor in Operations role. Shall we proceed?

Yeah, we can proceed.

Let’s start with your technical expertise. Can you describe your approach to teaching service operations management to a graduate-level class? How would you ensure students connect theoretical concepts to practical applications?

You know, first thing with the service oriented, uh, experience that I have during my.

PhD level with food delivery platforms where we have uh, worked with the Swiggy vice president, uh, in problem detection and everything. And 2nd, with the experience that I have gained in ISRO, where I have been played a major role in cost service providing services of PSLV N series variant where we used to estimate the cost and all those things. I will incorporate these experience in the form of active learning strategies.

Problem based learning, case studies and design exercises where UH service based learnings will play a major role. Like we can also make some simulation based excise that will make UH students to get UH very much motivated towards the service industry. Then we will proceed with the problems faced by the service industry. This will make the students to think in both the managerial side and also the problem research oriented side. This will encourage them to work.

In our classroom curriculum like.

What's the effective learning in the service operation management side?

And in when coming to the other thing I will also.

Arrange guest lectures from the expert service experts from various service industries, including the e-commerce platforms and consulting firms and other.

Emirate professors from various education institutions like IIM and IITS. This will encourage the students to get into the topic and with that I will also conduct regular formative assessment on my teaching and as well as the students performance and data and every after every.

Uh, course, uh, not even after every course completion, every chapter I used to evaluate myself and make the students engage.

With me on the topic.

Of service, uh, operations management and I will also improve myself.

And make myself flexible to adopt the students from variable domains.

Yeah, first thing is problem based learning. If we take service operation management nowadays e-commerce platform has become a most general thing. Everyone will be facing each kind of problem. I will just make the students to list the problems that they are facing with that list of problems. I will make similar kind of problems as a cluster and I will make the group of students to make it as a group access where they will actively participate and what are the problems is causing and I will ask them to 1st identify the what are the problems.

Understood. You emphasize active learning, case studies, simulation-based exercises, guest lectures, and formative assessments to bridge theoretical concepts with practical applications. That’s a robust approach. A follow-up: In simulations or problem-based learning exercises, how would you ensure balanced engagement for students with varying levels of prior knowledge?

I will make them to find what, uh, with, with this kind of approach, students will come up with lot of good ideas how to eradicate those problems and what are the suggestions. And we will conduct A feasibility approach among all those groups. And with this active learning approach, where we will be conducting the feasibility check of their ideas, we will evaluate and then any research ideas might come out of these kind of, uh, discussions. And I believe that the research ideas mostly come out of these kind of.

And what are the estimated, uh, expected causes for all those problems? And what are the expected consequences of, uh, those problems based on these approaches?

So it will also be useful for my own research oriented.

Progress in my academical profession and I also make.

Students to uh.

Enjoy the benefit of their, uh, idea and feasibility approach. We, we will just make some rank ordering to encourage the group to go 1 by 1. And what are the things we will give some time for them. That ranking procedure will be made which made encourages student to participate eagerly and if possible, some sort of uh.

Always anything, uh, everything should not be given directly to the students. It's better to make them go surf the Internet and get the things done. So I will encourage them to bring the case studies related to them and all those things with these case studies, whatever they are giving, which one I feel like highly related and highly worth, I will use it in my teaching curriculum also.

Praise or dis something can be provided to them to encourage them in the active learning sessions. With this active learning session, we will be giving extra marks if they found some case studies because.

With this kind of way, I can make students engage in the active learning process involving all the steps related to the teaching.

Understood. You would leverage student clustering, problem identification, feasibility analysis, and active competition to engage them, incorporating their findings into your teaching materials. Your approach ensures inclusivity while promoting research-rich, experiential learning. Another angle: How would you assess whether these methods lead to measurable improvements in student learning outcomes?

Yeah, First thing is based on the feasibility analysis and all those things, evaluation will be provided. And while in the examination, we will also, uh, try to provide these kind of practical examples and ask them to evaluate and provide all those things individually. So in that way I can evaluate the students and understanding on these topics. And when it comes to the research, it's like whatever the research ideas that has been generated, if the idea, lot of ideas are generating if.

Of ideas of generating from the same sort of discussion and active learning, then it is automatically reflects that this method is worth discussing with the students. Initially it might be a bit hard because not all the groups will come up with the excellent ideas. With the continuation of this approach and shuffling of the groups will help all the members to all the candidates or students to come up with the same level of achievement. This will motivate almost all those students. Who and all are interested.

To learn the subject.

Your approach evaluates both individual understanding through exams and group contributions via research ideas, adjusting methods dynamically for inclusivity and engagement. A focus on iterative improvement ensures measurable student progress. Let’s step into your research expertise. Could you share how your work, particularly with food delivery platforms and ISRO, aligns with current trends in sustainable operations?

My uh, research with food delivery platform is highly engaged with IIT Madras and here first we have considered what is the.

Yeah, first thing is.

We have gone through lot of, uh, interview kind of, uh, purpose to interview kind of on journals to find out the problem that exists. Initially, we found out that last of strikes has been held between and by the restaurants in order to, uh, making that platforms are charging High Commission rate while using their service. So first, my objective addresses the problem between the food delivery platform and the restaurants. And 2nd, we identified that platforms are facing high.

Losses because of the logistics service and operations in order to, uh, in order to use the logistics services in effective way, we have made the procedure for how the logistics services can be shared with another, uh, platform like e-commerce platform or some other quick delivery platform. And at the same time, we are very sure that competitive say we should not share the platform with another food delivery platform that is the same kind of competitor. And 3rd problem comes with the gig worker, which is the.

Hard topic over nowadays where gig workers are going for strike and all those things and gig workers participating in multiple platforms, they will seem to be having 2-3 mobiles where they will 1 mobile will operate on Uber, other mobile will operate on Ola. So what happens? The customer dissatisfaction is keep.

Your research effectively addresses multifaceted challenges in food delivery platforms, including restaurant-platform conflicts, optimizing logistics through cross-platform sharing (avoiding direct competitors), and reducing customer dissatisfaction tied to gig worker multitasking. How does this work translate into sustainable operations strategies, particularly in reducing environmental or resource inefficiencies?

My research primarily focuses on the food delivery platforms using the game contracts, designing using the game theoretical approach. There I consider the strategic interaction between the restaurants.

For the interruption, I'm having some technical glitch over here. Umm.

E-commerce platform and gig workers I consider my research into three different chapters first chapter we address the conflict between food delivery platform and the restaurants where we can see lot of restaurants are against the platform they used to complain and NRA has filed a.

I'm playing against uh, the food delivery platform for uh, charging exorbitant, uh, Commission rate.

1st we address that by using.

Stackelberg game with a proper.

Approach where?

Uh, each restaurant will be charged a separate Commission rate and similar second objective when we consider that because of the operational.

Expenses they they incur.

In order to compensate that.

We have decided how that logistics services can be utilized effectively. So in between the food delivery platform and another e-commerce platform because sharing of the logistic resources between the same food delivery platform won't be appropriate because they are the competitors for the industry.

Operational expenses.

And third up.

Approach we went like in service industry mainly depends on the.

Trust that we are having that trust generally means that.

Depends on the gig workers end service provider. So nowadays what happens gig workers will be uh, enrolling with multiple food delivery platforms like Swiggy, Zomato or Blinkit or some other uh, platforms and the service level that they try to provide to that particular platform can't be achieved. But their income seems to be high. That's the main reason they are going towards the multi homing behavior. So we try to address by providing the incentive mechanism and then what are the uh.

MMM punishments kind of thing. Not punishment. Like, not exactly punishments. And what are the?

Thing that need to be addressed once the incentive provides how the, uh, how we can make them.

Uh, to work for a single platform.

Uh, so that it's.

Trust can be increased.

Stand in the same way.

The particular uh.

Platforms income will also get increased without harming situation for all the.

Players, I'll let you see another.

Hello.

Yes, Professor. I understand now. Your research employs game-theoretical approaches to resolve conflicts, optimize logistics, and encourage focused engagement of gig workers for a balanced and sustainable strategy across stakeholders. Let me now shift focus. Could you explain how your findings, particularly the resource-sharing strategies or incentive mechanisms, could be practically implemented to foster sustainability in operations?

Yeah, uh, we can take like, umm.

Food delivery platform workers will be have uh that gig workers while operating with the small or emerging e-commerce platform or small small business platforms whom are not the competitor for the exact food delivery platforms. With this, we can also.

To make the food delivery Plaid, uh.

Gig workers to engage in multiple service and delivery also increases with increase in delivery.

Their salary or payment per trip or per delivery will also get increased and.

And similarly with increase in the in their salary platform now have slight upper hand to pay for the gig workers. This is one kind of incentive mechanism through which we tried to reduce the.

Conflict of, uh, between food delivery platform and gig workers, and also satisfy both the gig workers, uh, by operating in a single platform and also the food delivery platform, which increases its user base with proper delivery and efficient uh, delivery processes. And 2nd coming to the logistics uh.

This in this way, logistics service sharing can be made and gig workers going with multiple platform approach. When coming to this point, we are just make sure that.

I will be may reviewing the PLA gig workers movement towards the customer, uh, randomly, if that gig worker is found to have uh, going for ma another direction apart from the direction provided by the food delivery platform, then we can easily identify that these kind of, uh, behavior is uh, causing because of he's engaged with multiple platform. We then we are going for the uh, penalizing mechanism where we will be penalizing those kind of gig workers who is operating with.

Because of this penalizing factor, what happens? The overall revenue obtained by the gig worker goes down. Considering this in mind an incentive that he will obtain from the food delivery platform, he will prefer to stick to the single food delivery platform and this will increase the service satisfaction of the customers and this will expand the user base of the food delivery platform, which is very much required.

Another, uh, platform.

Uh, in terms of, uh, uh, e-commerce platforms.

Understood. Your strategy involves incentive-driven cooperation and selective penalization to encourage gig workers to focus on single-platform delivery, enhancing trust, satisfaction, and operational efficiency for both platforms and customers. Resource-sharing within complementary industries similarly balances cost and sustainability. Shifting focus: Could you elaborate on your experience designing and conducting student evaluations and examinations, particularly ensuring they are aligned with course objectives?

Yeah. During my uh, PhD, I have been uh, teaching assistant for various courses like operation research applications, UH, and then data analysis for managers, uh.

And then that analysis application, sorry.

Yeah. Here what we do is first we will fix the object, what is the course object that everything will be shown to the students with that course objective. We will be making the syllabus in such a way that each syllabus, each point will be satisfying the course objective and we will conduct the proper evaluation of the students at the proper intervals. And with that evaluation, we also have some projects included in that. Projects and what are the case studies because managerial studies.

Should also contain the case studies. We also try to observe how the students are getting into the facts and how they are accepting.

What we have thought and then we also go for a poster presentations kind of thing and three minute presentation topic. These are the additional evaluation apart from the regular examination we will prefer.

And reflecting the topic uh.

MMM.

With this, uh, students, uh, research uh, the course objective can also be met by having the satisfaction that students has also participated with the practical knowledge and practical things that is happening around them.

Understood. You align course objectives with syllabus content and incorporate diverse evaluations—like exams, projects, case studies, poster sessions, and brief presentations—to holistically assess students' understanding and application of concepts. On to another area: How have you contributed to guiding student research or projects? Could you share an example?

Yeah, that's what uh, learning is the never ending process. And I firmly believe that every research candidate will bring something new learnings to their guide. And I will work along with the students in a throughout the process of research and keeps me updated and also help the students to understand the concepts through proper interaction with them. And we will have some uh, group sessions where we will. Reflect our work in a weekly way.

And we will review our process and we will also ask them to present the previous, uh, journals and research ideas on what basis they are bringing up first. We, I will encourage them to go and analyze what are the interest over there.

Sorry

And what are the interests they have on the subjects and what are the fields they need to, uh, explore? Once that field area is fixed, then we'll go for what are the trends, what are the factors that need to be addressed in the, in the following, uh, stages. And I make sure that these ideas that we have generated from our my course class courses using that active learning discussions and everything. I will ask the students whether they are, uh, kind of discussion will also go if they provide some excellent.

Objective object objecting their idea and I will also go through their idea. I will also learn and I will also make them learn. Research is like not learning or guiding. Apart from that it's two way approach, two way discussion where both will learn, get the knowledge on the new topic and interesting discussions will happen. In this way I will make sure that students are properly going along with the research curriculum also.

And we can I, I, I don't know.

You know, for diverse group of students now lot of things had came. First I will take what are the.

Understood. You approach guiding research as a collaborative, two-way learning process, fostering student engagement through regular reviews, exploration of interests, idea validation, and integration of active learning discussions to shape their research paths effectively. Finally, before we continue, how do you ensure clear communication and structured teaching, particularly for diverse groups of students?

Uh, students in theoretical knowledge, first I should make them understand theoretically what we are going to do and why we are going to do all those things. Uh, what will happen, uh, if we are doing all those things, all the concepts and all those way for once they get the theoretical interest on the topic, then we can proceed with the mathematical or some, uh, quantitative kind of approach, which make I make sure that students are very comfortable with the qualitative and theoretical one in case if quantitative things are.

Where I will take them in such a way that they will also feel interesting to involve in that they will learn. I will make them learn a step by step way. And my approach will be not for the bright students or you know, my approach will always try to give it to the students who are not that interested in the topic and my how can I make them to get into the topic and all those things I make sure that. During my session, all the students will get some learning.

Through that and I'm not focused on a particular group of students are like that.

MMM. In that way, I will proceed with that, uh, slowly, slowly going with it. And I won't go for any quantitative rigorous approach immediately. I will make sure that students are very comfortable with the, uh, practical and theoretical approach. And then if it requires, I will go for the quantitative approach slowly and ensure that all the students in my class are happily learning the session.

Understood. You prioritize theoretical foundations and gradual progression into quantitative methods, tailoring your approach to engage less-interested students while ensuring inclusivity and adaptability across diverse groups. A student-focused methodology like this promotes comprehensive learning effectively. That's clear. Let me recalibrate for the next set of questions; we'll delve into ensuring your fit within the academic and research landscape. Shall we?

Yeah.

We can proceed.

Yeah, Yeah. Uh, I have submitted, uh, I, I have a journal, uh, in electronic commerce research that is ABCDCA category and Q1 journal contracting and competing on a food delivery platform. And 2nd, I have submitted a journal in uh, computers industrial engineering, which is under review, optimizing logistic collaborative service sharing between food delivery platform and e-commerce platforms. Apart from these publications, I have participated in three international conferences which includes 33rd European Conference on Operational Research.

Great. Let’s discuss your research publication experience. Could you share details about any significant publications you’ve contributed to and their impact on the field?

So 2024 with this, uh, and I also participated in 34th Palms conference that held in, uh, Minneapolis in USA. And I have also participated in ICBA like modeling and analysis of ergonomic performance variables in IT industries, uh, in, during my Mtech, uh, these are the publications and conferences I have, uh, engaged in.

Impressive. Your publications, particularly the Q1 journal on food delivery platforms and ongoing work in logistics collaboration, reflect strong contributions to operational research. Participation in esteemed conferences like EURO and POMS also demonstrates active academic engagement. How do you see these publications shaping your future research agenda?

How I can identify and, and identify that particular gig worker is not working enough, uh, with a single platform alone, He's having multiple type with multiple platforms like that. And 2nd, I'm interested in going on into the healthcare sector. Like what makes the people to go to.

Yeah, uh, to be frank, that uh, my third objective, what I am working is like.

The doctor or a brand hospital like in Vellore with the brand or the particular doctor which.

The people are preferring in that way. I'm just I'm planning to work along with that clustering kind of approach. And 2nd, I will also making myself ready to understand that digital twinning technology in healthcare sector because I have recently become the father and I understood that medical sector is highly fragile and we need to make them trained really well. So digital twinning is much required in that approach.

So.

In future in not uh, I won't say I will be doing it in a near term, but in future in two years I will provide some sort of tie up with the medical hospital.

Uh, organizations in order to introduce digital training in their sector. And I will also get the self satisfaction that I have made something to the.

Organization and to the society.

Our financial research interests.

Understood. Your research trajectory reflects deep societal and operational relevance—identifying multi-platform gig behavior, exploring healthcare decision-making, and pioneering digital twinning in medical training. These areas align well with advancing both academic thought and societal impact. Before we move on, could you share any collaborative projects with industry or academic institutions that have shaped your expertise further?

Yeah, uh.

That second logistics sharing and this algorithm for identifying the gig workers facing. We are just working with the VP of Glean technology presently and ex Swiggy VP. With this kind of approach we will be approaching a lot.

Of industry experts to get their advice and all those things we'll be doing. And in addition to that for digital twinning kind of thing. And what are the healthcare decisions? I'm having a few types with the CMC doctors over there and we are about to have some discussion on the topics and what are the questionnaires should be made and how we can get the data and what are the preferable, preferable methodology for carrying out those research and what are the important factors and all those things.

I'll be working with the hospital organizations and I'm even trying to approach. Once there's some prototype output I'm getting, then I will approach the government or some other private organizations to get the funding for my project. With that kind of approach, I can satisfy both my inner motivation towards the research and.

Academical agenda also of the institution.

You’ve demonstrated strong industry and academic collaboration through partnerships with technology leaders like Glean and healthcare professionals at CMC. Your initiative to seek government or private funding underscores a proactive approach to impactful research. Now, given your background and aspirations, how do you foresee contributing to the academic and research reputation of this institution?

Yeah. Uh, first thing, uh, academic side, also on research side, I'll be, uh, I will try to publish a minimum of 1 manuscript in a year. Uh, that too in a peer reviewed high quality, uh, research journal, CBDC, A or a star category of journals. And with the high collaboration, I will also try to get the projects from the various, uh, other organizations apart from CMCI will also collaborate with my fellow scholars who has been now working in different.