About AcademicOS
AcademicOS — the operating system for teaching excellence.
Strengthening the processes that determine institutional outcomes — while preserving the human wisdom at the heart of educational excellence.
Mission
To strengthen the academic processes that determine institutional outcomes — diagnosing each institution's academic operating system, installing the processes it most needs, training the champions who run them, and continuing to guide the system as it matures.
Vision
An academic operating system — agentic, data-driven, and human-led — in which curriculum, delivery, assessment, and continuous improvement function as a single integrated cycle, and in which every recommendation is grounded in research and practice.
Governance
AcademicOS is built on the principle that autonomous systems should accelerate human judgment, not replace it. Every agentic component in our architecture has a defined human escalation path; every recommendation we issue carries an accountable office and a measurement that will retire it.
The Practice
AcademicOS is an advisory practice led by Prof. Ramesh Bhat, drawing on senior resource persons as engagements require. It rests on four decades of institutional practice — as Professor of Finance at IIM Ahmedabad, as Vice Chancellor of a seven-campus university, and in advisory and board roles across education, health, and industry.
Backed By
AcademicOS is backed by angel investors, in their personal capacity, from deep-tech entrepreneurship, technology and finance.
Ashish Bhat
Co-founder, ideaForge (an Indian deep-tech UAV manufacturer) · IIT Bombay alumnus.
Esha Wali
Senior Lead Engineer, Vice President, JP Morgan · Technology Advisor, AcademicOS.
With more angels joining.
The Founder
Prof. Ramesh Bhat
Founder, AcademicOS & SkillProcess · Visiting Distinguished Professor, IIM Mumbai · Formerly: Professor, IIM Ahmedabad and Vice Chancellor, NMIMS University
Prof. Ramesh Bhat is the founder of AcademicOS and SkillProcess. He served as Vice Chancellor of SVKM’s NMIMS Deemed-to-be University — a multi-campus institution spanning seven campuses with more than 30,000 students — where he earlier served as Dean and Provost of the School of Business Management. He guided NMIMS through its A++ rating in the fourth NAAC accreditation cycle, steered the business school through AACSB and EQUIS accreditation, and took a proactive stance on embedding Generative AI into higher education practice.
Before NMIMS, he spent over twenty-five years as a Professor of Finance at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, where he held administrative responsibility as Chair of Management Development Programs and Research.
He is a Takemi Fellow in International Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (1990–91), and holds a PhD and a Master’s Degree in Commerce from the Delhi School of Economics, and B Com (Hons) from Hans Raj College, University of Delhi.
His research publications span Finance, Health Economics, and Academic Governance. He is co-author of A Casebook in Financial Management (with Prof. I.M. Pandey, McGraw-Hill Education, 4th edition, 5th edition under preparation).
Career
2020–2026
Vice Chancellor
SVKM's NMIMS Deemed-to-be University
2017–2020
Provost and Dean, School of Business Management (SBM)
SVKM's NMIMS Deemed-to-be University
1986–2014
Professor of Finance
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
1990–1991
Takemi Fellow in International Health
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
1995–2019
Adjunct / Visiting Faculty
ISB Hyderabad · IIM Udaipur · UNC Chapel Hill (Jaipur Program)
Board Positions
- Basic Healthcare Services, Udaipur (current)
- National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC)
- BEML · ITI Ltd · Corporation Bank
- Ahmedabad Stock Exchange
International Consulting
- Abt Associates India
- DFID New Delhi
- Royal Netherlands Embassy
- USAID New Delhi
- CDC India
- Asian Development Bank
- European Commission
- World Health Organisation
Current Engagements
Alongside the AcademicOS work and his writing, Prof. Bhat holds a visiting faculty appointment and advises a small number of institutions on strengthening their management education, academic processes, and governance. Current engagements include:
Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Mumbai
Visiting Distinguished Professor, contributing to the strengthening of management education programmes, including executive education, in corporate finance, private equity and health insurance.
N. L. Dalmia Institute of Management Studies and Research, Mumbai
Member, Managing Council of the Institute (a School of Excellence of the N. L. Dalmia Educational Society), providing strategic guidance and institutional oversight.
IIHMR University, Jaipur
Reviewing the MBA programme, with attention to its academic design, assessment and outcomes.
K. K. Wagh Group of Institutions, Nashik
Working with the society and its trustees to strengthen the academic processes of its programmes and to guide the Group on its path to becoming a university.
Beyond these formal roles, he takes part in many informal consultations with academic leaders across India — on academic quality and process, and on the practical challenges institutions face.
The Chronicle
The AcademicOS Chronicle is a manuscript of weekly reflections written every Monday by Prof. Ramesh Bhat. Each reflection traces a specific meta-academic process challenge to its mechanism and provides a concrete suggestion to strengthen it. The Chronicle is the research base for all AcademicOS frameworks — grounded not in literature alone, but in four years of lived institutional experience at the highest levels of Indian higher education.
Read the Chronicle →SkillProcess
AcademicOS and SkillProcess.in are companion offerings from Prof. Ramesh Bhat. AcademicOS is the institutional platform — AcademicOS Vitals, structured advisory, and leadership cohorts for VCs, Deans, and IQAC heads. SkillProcess is the practitioner platform — Management Development Programmes that translate analytical frameworks into working decisions.
The inaugural SkillProcess MDP — Finance using Claude Agentic AI System: Turn your Excel mastery into agentic finance decisions — equips professionals with the judgment and tools to make data-driven financial decisions using AI-assisted analysis.
Visit SkillProcess.in →