Great Lakes Institute of Management (also known as Great Lakes) is a business school located in Chennai. The institution, a brain-child of the US-based management guru Dr Bala V. Balachandran, aims to fill the vacuum for a top-flight business school in Tamil Nadu and put it on par with the three other southern states that boast of top-rung management institutions: Indian Institutes of Management in Bangalore and Kozhikode and Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. The institute was founded by Balachandran in 2004. Dr Bala V balachandran is a professor of Accounting & Information systems at Kellogg School of Management, Chicago, USA. He was conferred Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honor, in 2001.He is also the co-founder of two very reputed B-schools, ISB Hyderabad and MDI Gurgaon.