Sudev Sheth

Faculty Lead, Entrepreneurship Initiative
Senior Lecturer, History

Email: sudev@wharton.upenn.edu  |  Phone: 215-898-1215

Dr. Sudev Sheth is a Senior Lecturer of International Studies at The Lauder Institute where he teaches perspectives on entrepreneurship, global capitalism, and leadership. He also holds an appointment as Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of South Asia, business history, and family enterprise in societies past and present. Prior to joining the Penn community, Dr. Sheth was the Harvard-Newcomen Fellow in Business History at Harvard Business School where he taught in the MBA and doctoral programs.

Dr. Sheth received his PhD in History & South Asia Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and his MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley where he studied music, politics, and languages.

His writings have appeared in Economic & Political Weekly, Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient, Manuscript Studies, and Business History Review. He has also published case-related materials on leadership, ethics, and family business for Harvard Business Publishing. Some of his popular writings have appeared in Scroll.in, Hindustan Times, Knowledge at Wharton, and The Conversation.

Dr. Sheth’s latest book, Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India, explores how a prominent family business from seventeenth-century India navigated political uncertainty across generations to expand their entrepreneurship and shape state power into modern times. The family featured in the book is now in their fifteenth generation, recognized as one Asia’s largest manufacturers of textiles and fast fashion today.