About the Team
Ananth is a senior management executive, strategist, design thinker, technologist, coach and entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in business & digital strategy, brand & customer experience, social innovation, design thinking, business transformation, and value engineering, across EMEA and APAC. He has been helping boards, leaders, teams, and organisations achieve dramatic, sustainable results – by helping them master and balance strategy, innovation, culture and pragmatic execution, as they scale. Ananth brings a wealth of experience covering public, private and social sectors – from start-ups to global Fortune 50 firms. Industry segments include Logistics, Retail & CPG, E-commerce, EPC, Infrastructure & Real Estate. He is passionate about utilising the power of disruptive innovations like social technologies, data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, IoT etc, to build scalable businesses, and create lasting value.
In some of his earlier experiences, he was a board member & CEO of DTDC’s retail arm – India’s largest networked express logistics company (India partner of DPD Group, Europe), Vice President (Innovation & Operations Consulting) at IBM Asia, Global Head of strategy & business development at Emirates National Oil Company. Ananth is the Founder & CEO at The Kaffee Partnership a boutique design thinking & growth consulting firm.
He is a Chartered Accountant by qualification, and a coach in Exponential Organisations and is also Member & Consultant at OpenExO – the world’s largest business transformation ecosystem.
Ananth Swaminath
Sooraj is a senior management executive, global business & technology leader, an entrepreneur, investor and a corporate strategist with 18+ years experience in technology & operations across EMEA & APAC. He has been helping companies build offshore businesses that can scale and drive value, in his current role at Infogix, he started India operations and accelerated the growth of professional services from being an offshore delivery center to a highly profitable business under 18 months and expanded the company’s services offering globally. He has successfully helped in launching start-ups in the technology and FinTech sector in India & Canada. Industry segments include Retail & CPG, Banking & Financial Services, Manufacturing and more.
Sooraj is a Harvard alum, and also holds a Master’s degree in computer applications from India.
Sooraj Mundayat
Prof Palepu is the Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration, and Senior Advisor to the President of Harvard University. He was also the Senior Associate Dean at the Harvard Business School for several years, overseeing the school’s research, and its global initiative.
In the area of strategy, his recent focus has been on the globalization of emerging markets, particularly India and China, and the resulting opportunities and challenges for western investors and multinationals, and for local companies with global aspirations. He is a co-author of the bestseller book on this topic, Winning in Emerging Markets: A Road Map for Strategy and Execution. Professor Palepu Chairs the HBS executive education programs in China & India.
Professor Palepu has served on a number of public company and non-profit Boards. He has also been on the Editorial Boards of leading academic journals, and has served as a consultant to a wide variety of businesses. Krishna Palepu is a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a fellow of the International Academy of Management.
Professor Palepu has a masters degree in physics from Andhra University, a post-graduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, a doctorate in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an honorary doctorate from the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration.
Krishna Palepu
Meera is a senior company executive, innovator, strategist, and entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in strategy, brand building, brand design, customer experience, and marketing across a myriad of verticals with deep experience in the Indian/ASEAN markets. Meera is been a Board member, advisor, CEO, and mentor to various companies on brand building and brand management across Asia, in both B2C and B2B environments. Her industry expertise spans Transportation, Logistics, and Consumer Product sectors.
She was instrumental in creating one of the most admired brands in India in the logistics industry – GATI. She has been the brand custodian of GATI for the past 30 years. Meera is also the first and only woman entrepreneur to have successfully commissioned the first hydel power project (162MW) at Sikkim in NE India – GATI Infrastructure. Her newest venture – Avaan India, is an innovative last mile & retail logistics start-up. Avaan won The Start-up Business Award at the ET Business Innovation Leaders Awards 2020.