He was also the founder, chairman and dean emeritus of Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai, India.

In 1966, Bala attended a month-long workshop conducted by Dr. Landis Gephart on Quality Control and Reliability Engineering organised under the aegis of USAID in Chennai.

At the end of the workshop, he was offered a full scholarship to pursue his MS/PhD at the University of Dayton, Ohio.

Balachandran founded the Great Lakes Institute of Management, an independent business school in Chennai, India.

They had two sons, Sudhakar Balachandran (Director of MBA Graduate Studies & Associate Professor of Accounting at the University of Illinois, Chicago) and Diwakar Balachandran (Professor, Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Division of Internal Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center).