Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere (20 page)

RAVI VENKATESAN
is the former chairman of Microsoft India and Cummins India.

Under Venkatesan’s leadership (2004–2011), India became Microsoft’s second-largest
presence, as well as one of its fastest growing markets. Microsoft India was consistently
rated one of the country’s most respected companies, most admired brands, and best
employers. Venkatesan was instrumental in creating Microsoft India’s Project Shiksha,
a computer literacy program that has so far trained over 730,000 schoolteachers in
India and improved the lives of thirty-five million students. In 2011, Venkatesan
was voted India’s Most Influential Multinational CEO in the annual survey conducted
by the
Economic Times
, the country’s leading business newspaper.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Venkatesan worked for sixteen years at Cummins Inc. After
serving in several key roles at Cummins in the United States, he moved back to India
in 1996. As chairman of Cummins India, he led the company’s transformation into India’s
leading provider of power solutions and largest manufacturer of engines. Venkatesan
helped establish the Cummins College of Engineering, India’s first engineering college
for women, in Pune.

Venkatesan is currently a director on the boards of AB Volvo and Infosys and a fellow
of the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to
developing and supporting a global community of business leaders whose sense of purpose
goes beyond achieving financial success for themselves and their institutions. An
adviser to several family businesses and entrepreneurial ventures, he is a member
of the advisory boards of Bunge Limited and Marico Innovation Foundation, and he serves
on Harvard Business School’s Global Alumni Board. He is also a founding partner and
chairman of Social Venture Partners India, a network of philanthropists addressing
complex social issues through venture philanthropy.

Venkatesan holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute
of Technology, Bombay (1985), a master’s degree in industrial engineering from Purdue
University (1986), and an MBA from Harvard Business School (1992), where he was a
Baker Scholar. Ravi has written two articles for the
Harvard Business Review
. He was awarded the Indian Institute of Technology’s Distinguished Alumnus Award
in 2003 and Purdue University’s Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award in 2011.

Venkatesan is married to Sonali Kulkarni and lives in Bangalore, India. He can be
reached at
[email protected]
.